


All That You're Making Of Me

by luninosity



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Avengers Movies RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Comfort, Dom/sub Play, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Filming, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, Love, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Pining, Recovery, Sexual Assault, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:29:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1537559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unfolding of a relationship, over time. And a perfect happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. now

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [All That You're Making Of Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911992) by [sashach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashach/pseuds/sashach)



> I promise the rating will change, in later chapters. *grin*
> 
> Title from Dean Martin's "My Own, My Only, My All" because Sebastian Stan is a Rat Pack fan. 
> 
> Apologies for any failure of Romanian phrases--have relied on Google translate + quick actual Google search to cross-check--so if something's not right, let me know!

_ now: Sebastian _  
  
They arrive at the _Winter Soldier_ premiere separately. Interviews beforehand. Different places.   
  
They arrive at the premiere within five minutes of each other. They’re both wearing grey. Chris looks up and smiles and Sebastian wants to run across the red carpet and kiss him, wants to throw arms around him and feel the scratch of that beard on his own skin and taste the sunlight of Chris’s lips.  
  
They arrive at the premiere under an exuberant late-afternoon sky, clouds playing tag with the wind and the setting sun, the flash of camera-bulbs and car-mirrors in the distance. Sebastian doesn’t in fact run across the carpet. But he does walk fast.  
  
Chris waits, and grins, and puts an arm around him the second he’s within reach, drawing him close. “Missed you.”  
  
“We’re sharing a hotel room,” Sebastian says, “you saw me this morning,” and curls into Chris’s warmth more closely, breathing in crisp woodsy cologne, familiar skin, security. He wouldn’t say he’s been nervous, precisely, all day. Only tense. On edge: the world not quite right, without Chris at his side. But now it _is_ right. And all the quivering nerves settle, soothed.  
  
“Yeah,” Chris rumbles, voice tangible, resonating through all the places they’re standing so close. The camera-flashes pop. Taking note. “This morning. Too long. Interviews together from now on, ’kay?”  
  
 _ “Împreună.” _ Sebastian leans into the voice. The warmth. The arm over his shoulder. “Together. Yes. I missed you, too.”  
  
“You look amazing.” Chris’s other hand wanders over to rest on his hip, casual and quietly protective and overjoyed. “I want to peel that suit off you later. How’re you doing?”  
  
“I’m fine, thank you…very much in favor of suit removal…and our bed, I quite like our bed…are you trying to put your hand down my pants in public?”  
  
“No one’s looking at us. Robert Redford just got here. We could skip the movie part and go _find_ our bed.” Despite the teasing—and the teasing hand—Chris’s eyes are just a bit concerned. Thinking about a phone call, two years ago; thinking about fear and pain and a desperately bandaged night. Chris had held him then too. Tea and promises. Classic Bill Murray comedies in bed, and strong fingers wrapped around his.  
  
“I didn’t say I objected to your hand down my pants. You may continue.” He walks fingers along Chris’s arm: forearm, bicep, collarbone. Real. “We shouldn’t skip the movie. Our premiere.”  
  
“Ours,” Chris says. “Yes.” The exploring hand, out of sight behind Sebastian’s back, squeezes a hip, just hard enough to speak volumes: _mine, yours, us, thank you, I want you, I love you._  
  
They don’t say the words aloud. Too many microphones. But it’s all there nonetheless. And Sebastian smiles.  


  
 _ now: Chris _  
  
Sebastian’s smiling at him. Chris wants to cry, a little: not from hurt, or if so only from the kind of hurt that comes along with too much joy. His heart aches with it, impossibly aglow.  
  
Overhead, the wind chases clouds merrily across the sky. The sun sends lowering rays to sparkle off glittering dresses and camera lenses. The red carpet, in New York City. Glitz and glamour. Nothing approaching the beauty of the man at his side.  
  
His grip on Sebastian gets a little tighter. Can’t help it. Holding on.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t appear to mind. Only leans in more, smile echoed in those eyes, soft and fond. “Feeling possessive, are you?”  
  
“Maybe a little. I did miss you.”  
  
“Yes, you said.” Sebastian’s eyes dance. Happy, healthy, _safe_. Not scared. Not injured. Not afraid of being unwanted. Not now. Chris shoves down the swell of burgeoning emotion. Wants to kiss him everywhere. And then realizes that Sebastian’s humming, very very quietly.  
  
“—that’s _my_ song! I mean. The one you wrote. For me. It is, right?”  
  
“ _Da_. I thought you could use the reassurance. Better?”  
  
“If by better you mean inappropriately timed erections,” Chris says, which is also true, as true as the undeniable fact that Sebastian knows precisely what he needs, every moment the emotions threaten to get too overwhelming. Sebastian’s perfect. Chris needs him like water. Like oxygen returning to long-deprived lungs.  
  
Both eyebrows go up. Excitement in the pale blue oceans. “I believe we’ve got time to find a men’s room. Can you be quiet, if we do?”  
  
“Can you?” He sneaks his hand lower, under soft suit fabric. Rubs his thumb over inviting skin. He in fact loves hearing Sebastian come apart for him, screaming his name, begging for more, babbling in English and Romanian and a few other languages, words falling out as Sebastian forgets to be shy and sweet amid the onslaught of delirious pleasure, Chris’s hand on his cock and Chris’s cock buried in his body…  
  
That’s an _extremely_ inappropriate erection, now. And the cameras’re swinging back to them. Damn.  
  
Sebastian looks at him with absolute wicked delight. “Very likely not. You may need to put a hand over my mouth.”  
  
“…oh good God.”  
  
“Twenty minutes.”  
  
“Closest men’s room. Come on.” He doesn’t move right away, though, despite the words. Lingers there, his hand on Sebastian’s waist, Sebastian’s eyes shining at him. The moment sings like crystal, drawn out and timeless.   
  
Very hushed, very private, not for the cameras, he breathes, “I love you, you know.”  
  
And Sebastian says at almost the same time, so the words mingle in the air, “ _Te iubesc_ , always, you remember that one, I think.”  
  
“You love me,” Chris says.   
  
“Yes. Always.”   
  
“Always,” Chris agrees, and they escape the red carpet and the cameras and the curious clouds hand-in-hand.   
  
They’re only two minutes late, in the end. Chris can’t bring himself to care. Not with the new pink marks visible at Sebastian’s collar, the ragged well-used catch in that eloquent voice, the deep-seated satisfied thrumming through all of Chris’s bones.  
  
After they tumble into their seats—tripping briefly over Anthony Mackie, who grumbles, “Seriously, you two couldn’t wait until the afterparty to get kinky? Now I’m gonna spend the whole movie wondering which restroom's safe to walk into, come on”—Sebastian reaches over, not quite looking, and takes his hand.   
  
Chris wraps his own fingers around the offered ones, in the theater dimness, and holds on. That’s a language, too. Not contained in words. But one they share.   
  
Always.


	2. the first avenger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First meetings, and unspoken words.

_ three years ago: Sebastian _   
  
Chris Evans is beautiful.   
  
Sebastian’s helplessly, endlessly, head-over-heels in love with him by the end of their first conversation. The emotion hits like a tidal wave of clear joy. And it never goes away. He thinks it must, somehow, sometime—surely no one outside of fairytales falls in love at first sight, surely this feeling can’t last—but day after day it does last, and Sebastian’s in love.   
  
He watches Chris on set every chance he gets. Not much of a stretch, not when Bucky Barnes looks at Steve Rogers that way too. Bucky wants to protect Steve and cheer him on and follow him anywhere and kiss him senseless, and that’s just fine. Sebastian can handle that. He could build a _career_ on that.   
  
Chris is beautiful in the way that forests are beautiful, in the way that sunrise over Boston skylines is beautiful, in the depth of presence, the solidity of deep roots and layered compassion. Chris laughs with his whole body and loves his mother and can sing show tunes and down a shot of Jagermeister without missing a beat. Chris talks about nature and camping and the pure stillness of the woods at dawn, and his face lights up; Chris touches other people often, a hand on a shoulder or chest, as if he’s saying: we’re both real and we can feel this. Chris looks the way a casting call for Captain America could’ve only dreamed about, and opens his home to every guest who needs a place to stay, stranger or friend.   
  
Chris is beautiful in so many ways. Sebastian starts trailing him around on set, inadvertently. Chris, naturally, notices.   
  
“That’s the third time you’ve been outside my trailer in one day. Not that I’m complaining, but shouldn’t you be getting tied up over on the HYDRA set?”   
  
“Delayed,” Sebastian says, and stops leaning on the flimsy trailer wall, matching steps with Chris in the sunshine. Chris is taller, but Sebastian’s got long legs. They fall into rhythm, companionably. “Some sort of lighting difficulties. I shall have to be tied up and tortured tomorrow.”   
  
There’s a brief hitch in Chris’s next step—a rock? a stumble?—but no hint of it in his voice. “So you’re spending your afternoon off stalking me? Come on, we can get you a more fun hobby than that. Llama-hair sweater-knitting? Ceramic sculpture art? Erotic stamp collecting?”   
  
“Erotic stamp collecting, please…is that an actual option? Do you have any?”   
  
“Oh, yeah, you should see the mountain women of Tibet. Never knew you could do _that_ with yak butter.” Chris dodges a flying intern as she sprints in the direction of Hugo Weaving’s trailer. “Was she holding a kitten? Does Hugo eat kittens now…? You do know I’m not serious, right, because I actually don’t even know what yak butter is.”   
  
“Hugo’s niece requested a kitten for her birthday.” Sebastian inches a bit closer. Their shoulders almost touch. “I like my current hobby. Very in-character.”   
  
“Hmm,” Chris says, and drapes an arm around his shoulders. Sebastian tries not to purr. Like the kitten, finding a home. Good God, Chris even _feels_ perfect, warm and sturdy, made of muscles and sunshine, blue and gold.    
  
He’s pathetic. He’s aware.   
  
“Well,” Chris muses, evidently giving this great consideration, “if you’re going to keep turning up in my trailer—”   
  
“One time! You left the door open!” True. He’d only been trying to help. The wind had blown some script pages onto the floor, and he’d ducked in to pick them up.   
  
“—you can at least bring me coffee. Bucky would bring Steve coffee. How do you know everything, by the way? Hugo. Kittens. I didn’t even know he had a niece.”   
  
“I listen. Would you like yak butter in the coffee? Extra cream.”   
  
“Oh, God,” Chris says, “how does anyone ever think you’re innocent, you’re terrifying, seriously, how does this _work_ , do you just charm everyone into thinking you’re adorable and wide-eyed and bashful so you can get away with talking about yak butter in public, and yes I realize what a strange sentence that was.”   
  
Sebastian contemplates answers. Settles for widening his eyes even more and putting on his best guileless lost-orphan-in-foreign-land expression. “My yak-farmer aunt would be dismayed by your implications.”   
  
Chris’s foot freezes mid-step.   
  
Sebastian makes a token attempt to keep the expression in place, then gives up and starts laughing.    
  
“Oh thank God,” Chris says, and finally sets the foot down. “I was thinking I’d have to call your aunt and apologize or something, how would I even say that in Romanian…”   
  
“ _Îmi pare rău_ …of course I could just have told you to say ‘where do I find the erotic stamp models,’ for all you know. Terrifying?”   
  
Chris stops walking again. “No.”   
  
Because they’re walking together, Sebastian’s forced to stop too. He looks at the ground, at the dirt and a scraggly clump of weeds. Easier.    
  
He does know he’s not good at friends. Never has been. Not the boy with the odd accent, academy headmaster’s stepson, a bit too chubby from brand-new American food, a bit too lost in this new world where he’d never seen a sitcom or tasted a hot-dog, and he’d tried so hard to drink everything in and not have dreams about faceless men in uniforms stopping his mother at the border crossing and dragging her off…   
  
That hadn’t happened. They’d made it out. Together. The dreams’re all might’ve-beens. He knows.   
  
“Hey,” Chris says, and actually reaches out, touches his face, lifts his chin. Sebastian flinches—too much casual affection—and Chris takes the hand away, and Sebastian wants to beg for it back.   
  
“Come on,” Chris says. “Look at me. You okay? Did I say something stupid, ’cause I do that a lot, you might’ve noticed. I don’t think you’re terrifying. I think you’re allowed in my trailer any time you want, whenever, and you don’t have to bring me coffee, I like talking to you, I like _you_ , got it?”   
  
“…yes. Thank you.” Chris of course means that in a friendly way— _I like you, we’re cool, let’s hang out, I can put up with your weirdness_ —and not at all in the way that Sebastian would mean it, if he ever said the words back, the way that would sound like _I love you, you’re everything I never even imagined could be real, I love you._   
  
He doesn’t say the words. He brings Chris coffee the following morning, with extra cream and a painstakingly researched and printed-out picture of a yak stuck to the lid. Chris takes one look and cracks up so loudly that even Hugo glances their way, which makes every second on the laptop in the crevices of night and in the hotel business center in the small hours of the morning comprehensively worthwhile.   
  
Sebastian smiles, as Chris laughs. Once again, doesn’t say the words.   
  
  
_ three years ago: Chris _   
  
Sebastian Stan is breathtaking. Like gravity, like sunlight, that’s incontrovertible. The planet’s spinning, and the sun provides heat, and Sebastian Stan is breathtaking. Chris had literally fallen down his own trailer steps, the first time he’d opened the door to find those eyes on the other side. Not his smoothest moment.   
  
But the glorious eyes had gone all wide with concern, and strong hands had steadied him—Sebastian’s got marvelous reflexes—and then they’d stood there staring at each other for too long because Chris could think of absolutely no right words to say.   
  
He feels like that a lot around Sebastian. Too muscular and all-American and clumsy, Boston-Irish kid who likes pizza and beer and spontaneous family-and-friends karaoke nights, while Sebastian is beautiful and exotic and eloquent in multiple languages, gorgeous and tentatively mischievous and a little shy, ducking that head when he talks, looking endlessly elated when asked questions, when teased or kidded or included in conversations…   
  
Sebastian seems to like him. At the very least, will evidently spend an unanticipated afternoon off in keeping Chris company, rather than going back to the hotel or exploring a new city. That’s got to mean…something. Chris wishes he knew what. Probably doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean.   
  
Sebastian brings him coffee with a picture of a yak stuck to it, the morning after that wonderful afternoon. Chris collapses into helpless laughter. “Did you stay up all night googling hoofed mammals? Is it _smiling_ at me?”   
  
“You might be extremely attractive to hoofed mammals,” Sebastian says. “It is a possibility.”   
  
“I would love to know how your brain works,” Chris says back. “Seriously. I mean. Preferably _before_ you conquer the world.” He _would_ like that. He would like to know everything about Sebastian. Whether he prefers _Star Wars_ or _Star Trek_ , why his favorite color is blue, whether he’d rather sleep on the left side or the right side of a bed…   
  
“I promise to provide you with advance notice of any plans for world-conquering.” Sebastian settles into the make-up chair, curling one graceful leg under him. Chris thinks of wary cheetahs, long-legged and inquisitive and skittish of human touch.    
  
“Thanks,” he says, “I appreciate being part of your nefarious schemes,” and gets a sideways amused glance from pale turquoise eyes. Cautious playfulness in the treasure-box. The scent of rich nut-brown coffee and cream through the morning air.    
  
Sebastian has to fall off a train in this film. Bucky Barnes has to die. A stupid ridiculous random death, the kind of death that happens in war, one moment there and the next gone. A tumble from a train. A body unrecovered. No climactic showdown, no chance for goodbye.   
  
Chris isn’t actually sure he can handle that scene. He’s an actor, so he will, of course. But his stomach twists at the thought. He sets the coffee down.   
  
Sebastian might get to come back. They’ve both done some reading. They know the comic-book story arcs. But there’s no guarantee, and it’s all up to Marvel’s cinematic preferences. His gut twists again. He needs more time. He needs _more_.   
  
Because Sebastian Stan _is_ breathtaking. Because Sebastian has the widest happiest mouth Chris has ever seen, and eyes like tropical waters under a moon. Because Sebastian takes nothing for granted, answering even reporters’ dumbest questions thoughtfully and sincerely, flinching when Chris even so much as jokes about finding him intimidating.   
  
Chris had been a little afraid that Sebastian wouldn’t come by, wouldn’t talk to him, in the wake of that one. The possibility’d kept him up all night, kicking too-hot blankets down with a restless foot. If those astonishing eyes thought he’d meant it—thought Chris didn’t want to see him—   
  
He’d been prepared to come over, under the cool silvery light of morning, and to put a hand on one guarded shoulder, and to try to find words. Any words. Anything to say: I do like you, I like being your friend, I’d like to kiss you if you might also like that, but I won’t, not without your permission, because I _am_ your friend, and whatever you’ve been through, whatever bruises you’ve come out with, healed and unhealed, I’m here.   
  
Sebastian had surprised him, instead. Coffee and a smile. Before Chris could even manage a word.   
  
Sebastian constantly surprises him. A challenge, enticing and multifaceted and intricately lovely. One that Chris will never grow tired of exploring. He knows that the way he knows his own name. Again: like gravity. Unassailable.   
  
He’d fallen in love with that smile the first time they’d ever met. In a casting director’s office, end of a too-long day full of not-quite-right Bucky Barnes auditions. The gilded lowering haze of a dying afternoon. Dust-mites in the air and a potted plant behind Sebastian’s head, green and curious.    
  
Sebastian had come in wearing a slim-fit jacket and skinny jeans and exuberant hair. Chris had almost been tired enough to call it off on the spot, too worn-out for a relatively unknown hipster kid with a resume that mainly suggested consummate skill at playing young and gay and troubled and spoiled by wealth.    
  
He’d looked up from his crumpled working-copy script-draft, already opening his mouth. Had met wide blue eyes and a hesitant genuine smile.    
  
Had lost his heart, right there, to that smile. Skinny jeans and potted plant and all.   
  
Sebastian’s luminous on camera. Better than Chris himself, truth be told, though admittedly Chris might be kind of biased in that evaluation. Sebastian loves all his characters, and throws himself into them wholeheartedly, _getting_ loneliness and pain and wistfulness and passion and courage in a way that’s purely inspiring to watch. Sebastian greets every day, every interminable script revision, as if he can’t quite believe how lucky he is to be here.    
  
And Chris, who’s been around Hollywood for a few eternal years by now, who stares at each audition on his calendar and wonders when he’ll have the inevitable anxiety attack, who thinks sometimes about giving it all up and moving behind the camera and becoming a director or producer instead…   
  
Chris finds himself inspired. Smiling back when Sebastian smiles. Wanting to run lines one extra time, just to hear the delight as that sensual voice wraps itself around English syllables.   
  
“They’re hardly nefarious plans.” Sebastian stretches, temporarily relieved from make-up artist ministrations, arms over his head. Chris watches his back arch. Swallows. Hard. Wordless. “I would like more sleep, however. Does hiding Joe’s megaphone count as nefarious? Uninterrupted afternoon naps?”   
  
“I can be on board with that. I get to rescue you today, right? Schedule change from yesterday?”   
  
“Yes…I imagine I won’t even be surprised by the Captain America muscles. I’m probably hallucinating anyway. Being tortured. Of course you’d turn up. Looking the way I’ve always pictured you, inside.”   
  
Chris has to swallow again. Gets out, very carefully, “It’s Steve coming for Bucky. Not Captain America. Just—me. I mean Steve. And it is real. Me coming for you.” Me being here for you. Me being in love with you.    
  
He thinks: I would be a hero for you, I would try with everything I am to rescue you if you ever needed that, and you won’t need that because you don’t need me, you’re astonishing and articulate and braver than I ever could be, I want to hear all the stories you don’t tell.   
  
He can’t say those words. Too many pieces he doesn’t know. Too many potential missteps, landmines, ways for it all to go wrong. Sebastian doesn’t talk about himself. Only turns up outside Chris’s trailer, and brings coffee, and smiles.   
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, and Chris jumps. “ _Da. Desigur_ , yes, of course, you know I would come for you too.”   
  
Bucky? Or Sebastian himself? The question hangs in the morning. Unfolding like an answer. Like an opening. Like the way their fingers touched, when Sebastian handed over the coffee-cup.   
  
The make-up artist comes back with sharpened eyeliner. Sebastian obediently closes both eyes. Chris sits very still while his own person attacks his face with foundation. He’s out of space to talk. Moment gone.   
  
He can’t ask that question. No demands. Sebastian’s his friend.    
  
He doesn’t say the words.


	3. sinatra on mars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phone calls and comfort and songs before sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is actually an interview...that I am too lazy to go back and find...in which Sebastian says he's geeky about space stuff and wanted to be an astronaut, and the interviewer makes a half-joking follow-up comment about going on the space shuttle, and Sebastian, all adorably serious, starts talking about Mars, and you can *see* the interviewer going, 'oh, damn, SO out of my depth, time to change topics...'
> 
> Chris Evans comes from a family full of performing-arts types. I imagine get-togethers are awesome and melodic.
> 
> I think most of the general gist of the Romanian bits is obvious (or Sebastian translates for us); the one that's not, when they're first looking for Mars, is "very cute".

_two years and six months ago: Chris_  
  
Chris is sitting on the floor of his hotel room. Panicking.  
  
The air’s cold, at almost two in the morning in New York City. Freezing, in fact. He’s turned all the lights on around the opulent hotel room. Not enough. He can’t feel it.  
  
Rehearsals tomorrow. Real rehearsals. Himself in a room with Joss Whedon and Chris Hemsworth and, oh God, Robert Downey Jr, and he can feel his hands shaking, the old familiar sensation he used to get before auditions, but worse, God, so much worse.  
  
He can’t do this. He _can’t_. Joss expects his actors to be brilliant, assumes they’ve all read Shakespeare and Stan Lee equally, throws out casual literary references and hilarious flip commentary like starshine, and believes they’ll all keep up, because anything less would be unthinkable. Chris, who’d dropped the redesigned Captain America shield on his foot the first time he picked it up from the props department, can’t breathe.  
  
It’s the _Avengers_. It’s going to be _huge_. The world’s watching.  
  
The script is so good and Joss is so good and everyone else is so good and Steve Rogers is a superhero with the world’s largest heart, seeing the best in people, knowing when to take action, where to take a stand.   
  
Chris Evans is just a kid from Boston. A kid who, right now, is back to being eighteen years old and having anxiety attacks before industry meetings. He knows intellectually that he’s panicking. That Joss trusts him with the role. That he’s played the role, and played it well, before.  
  
None of that matters. Unreal, at the moment.  
  
His back’s against the bed. It’s solid. Heavy. Not going anywhere. Maybe he can take superhero acting lessons from a bed. Maybe he’s actually going insane, if he’s thinking about taking acting lessons from hotel furniture.  
  
Oh God. He can’t.  
  
Everyone else is down in the bar, laughing, celebrating, winding up for tomorrow’s release. Mark Ruffalo just arrived, an hour or so ago. Scarlett had been teasing Clark Gregg, asking him about his wife and whether they ever reenact _Dirty Dancing_ scenes just for kicks. Clark, obligingly, had started singing the theme song out loud, not too badly despite the multiple beers.  
  
Chris had fled. Excuses of six-in-the-morning call time. Need for sleep. Robert had called him Captain, joking, and saluted, waving him off.  
  
And now he’s here. He’s here and not enough oxygen is here and he doesn’t recall how he ended up on the floor. He thinks maybe he’d meant to sit on the bed.  
  
Distantly, he considers the carpet under his bare toes. It’s fluffy. Plush. Trying its inanimate best to help.  
  
He’s forgotten how to inhale. His heart’s pounding like a snare drum, there’s blood rushing in his ears and he’s lightheaded and how could he ever imagine he could do this, why did he sign on, how can he walk out there tomorrow morning and begin to portray humanity’s most earnest champion when he can’t even stand up—  
  
He’s holding his phone. He wants to talk to someone. Sebastian. He wants to talk to Sebastian, to hear shy delight and sly innuendo, to listen to that extraordinary voice curl around his name. He can call Sebastian and Sebastian will never judge him, Sebastian’s good at listening, so good, so good at _everything_ , and Chris is his friend, surely Sebastian will talk to him as a friend, not like Chris is going to beg that he fall in love the way that Chris has, hopelessly, entirely—  
  
He doesn’t remember making the call, but the phone’s ringing. Chris, huddled on the floor, wraps an arm around his knees. Shuts his eyes. The world trembles.  
  
“ _Alo_ —hello, Chris, hi!” Genuine unfeigned pleasure. Familiar sensual lilt and flick of consonants. The world steadies, in that second: not completely balanced, but wobbling that way.  
  
“Hey…hi…sorry, I just…where are you?” There’re voices in the background. Light music. A clink of glasses.  
  
“Los Angeles. Drinks with ABC television executives, very enthusiastic, lovely hotel. Aren’t you in New York? What’s wrong?”  
  
Of course Sebastian knows where Chris is. Of course Sebastian can hear that something’s wrong.  
  
Chris doesn’t try to lie. He’s already taking comfort in that voice. Selfishly, he craves more. “I’m on the floor of my hotel room,” he says, “and I think I’m having an anxiety attack and I have to start rehearsals tomorrow and Iron Man and Joss Whedon dialogue and Shakespeare readings and dropping the shield and—”  
  
“Ah. Okay. We can handle this, I promise.” There’s a quick sweeping sound, someone standing up, a murmur in answer to questions in the background. The confidence is heartening; Sebastian isn’t simply saying the words. They’re all infused with the ring of truth. Burnished by the accent into articles of faith. “I’m here. You called me, and I’m here, all right?”  
  
The noise gets quieter, then fleetingly louder—a grumble of Romanian profanity, and a soft thump, and then, “Chris? Still there?”  
  
“Yeah…did you walk out of your meeting? You don’t have to…I mean, I’ll be okay. I’m okay.” He’s clinging to the phone.  
  
“You are not,” Sebastian retorts, “and I’m not about to leave you. I wasn’t calling you a demon from the bowels of hell, by the way. That was the gate.”  
  
“The gate?”  
  
“The hotel pool closes at ten. I climbed over the gate. Are you sitting up? Can you breathe?”  
  
“Um. You did what? Don’t walk out on ABC execs for me.”  
  
“One of them kept attempting to put a hand on my thigh, in any case. You’re far better company. Are you—”  
  
“He tried to—You shouldn’t have to put up with shit like that!”  
  
“Once more and he’d’ve found my vodka martini in his lap. Accidental, naturally.” Delivered with all the wide-eyed disingenuousness of which Sebastian’s capable, plainly exaggerated for Chris’s benefit. Sebastian wants him to smile. Chris, now having something new to panic about, realizes suddenly that he’s not thought about the morning, about the opening day of filming, for five whole minutes.  
  
I love you, he wants to say. I love you so damn much, thank you, thank you. I’ll come punch a studio head in the eye if you ask, for ever daring to lay a hand on you. Just ask me for something. Anything.  
  
“…why the pool?”  
  
“It’s quieter out here. And I like the sound of water. Deep breaths, please. Slower than that. You can do this, you can breathe, with me.”  
  
Chris, sitting on the faded plush comfort of his hotel-room carpet, closes his eyes. Pictures Sebastian, all dark hair and exotic-turquoise eyes and golden skin, perched alone on a solitary deck-chair beneath a California nighttime sky. Palm trees and warm breezes and stars like diamonds flung across blue velvet. The glow of dimmed lights around the lapping of water, and the tang of chlorine and sea-spray in the air.  
  
Sebastian’s voice is calm, not unworried, but steady. The accent fits the night. Unfurling lifelines, extended for the catching.  
  
“Better?”  
  
“Maybe…yeah…thanks.” For answering. For not trying to argue him out of the panic with instant well-meaning platitudes. For being real. For so much that there aren’t any words. The knot in his chest loosens, bit by bit.  
  
“Are you anywhere near a window?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t get up if you’re not. But if you are, look outside.”  
  
“Um…hang on.” He’s not at all near a window, but he can be. He eyes the bed, and the distance to that wall. Gets feet under him. They complain, clumsy, but rise to the occasion. “Okay, what’m I looking for?”  
  
“Mars,” Sebastian says. “Can you find it?”  
  
“I’m in New York,” Chris says. “I see New York.”  
  
The eye-roll’s audible, and affectionate, on the other end. “Yes, all right, _foarte drăguț,_ thank you. At least make an effort. Pretend. —So you _have_ found it, and you can look at it with me, right?”  
  
“Yeah.” He’s dragged a chair over to the window. Is looking up. He’s not sure he can spot Mars, but there’re a few optimistic bits of light twinkling away. “We’re looking at Mars.”  
  
“Yes. Together.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, word very soft, almost inadvertent. Yes. Together. “Um. Why Mars?”  
  
“It’s big, and you might be able to see it, and I was reading an article about terraforming, on the plane…do you know, it’s feasible, provided that we can introduce enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere…melting polar ice caps…several centuries of spare time…I do love the idea. New worlds. New life. Watching the Earth come into view from another planet. I’d go.”  
  
“Not without me.” Too honest, too fast, too revealing; the slight catch of breath on the other end tells him Sebastian’s heard all of that, but Chris can’t tell what he’s thinking. Deflection, then. Distractions. “You really would? Just…leave Earth and go?”  
  
“I always wanted to be an astronaut. About Mars, though…you know it has two moons. Horror and Terror.”  
  
“Yeah, thank you, Phobos and Deimos, I did have a backyard telescope as a kid.” Chris leans his forehead against the glass. It’s cool on his skin. Sebastian’s voice feels like home in his ear. “And an astronomy book. Tracked constellations and everything.”  
  
“I can see it. You and your telescope and your show tunes, singing to the sky.”  
  
“Hey, man, _Oklahoma!_ is a classic. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve seen an Evans family production.”  
  
“I wasn’t…I’d join you on stage. If you wouldn’t mind. I bought a telescope the first Christmas after we arrived in America, did I ever tell you that? My stepfather didn’t know what to get me, so he handed me quite a lot of money. He was extremely apologetic about it. I was thrilled. I got to pick out the exact one I liked.”  
  
“You…didn’t tell me…but thank you. For telling me. I mean telling me now. You know what I mean. And you know you’ve just volunteered to play a reindeer, if you come visit around the holidays.” In truth, he’s kind of floored, and completely honored. Sebastian offers up pieces of that hidden past like gold painstakingly sifted from a riverbed: incredibly rare, turned over and weighed and only with reluctance lifted up to the light. And now Chris gets to hold one of those pieces. Entrusted with it.  
  
“Yes. About knowing what you mean. Maybe about the reindeer. I had a point regarding the moons. And not the sort of filthy joke you’re hoping I’m about to make.”  
  
“Who, me? Say it anyway. You know you want to.”  
  
“You’ll just have to imagine it. Mars is the god of war. Phobos and Deimos attend him. But Mars is also a god of agriculture. Virility. Guardian of the land. And war brings peace, and fear can sometimes be healthy. It can keep you alive.” A pause, introspective, and one more slow offering of shining gold: “It can remind you that you are alive. That you are human. And you, Chris…you’ll be amazing, tomorrow. I wish I could see you.”  
  
“Do you know everything,” Chris says, laughing or crying, hand over his mouth, “how do you know everything, how do you know the right thing to say, always, at—two-thirty in the morning, now…”  
  
“I’m clearly brilliant.” Sebastian sounds uncharacteristically smug, but the smugness is hiding relief; Chris can hear that, too, not as fully disguised as that voice wants it to be. There’s a quiet sound: probably Sebastian stretching, pointing toes, arching his flexible spine under appreciative palm fronds and crystal stars. “As are you. Better, yet?”  
  
“Yeah,” Chris says this time. “Yeah, I think so. And yes. You are. I—thank you. Sebastian…thank you.”  
  
 _“Nu spun că_ —no, don’t. Please.” There’s a brief pause, then. Chris, hand tight around his phone, wonders what that means. What Sebastian’s thinking. Why Sebastian’s not wanting to be thanked for this.   
  
He looks up. He still can’t see Mars. But the sky’s full of light, and he can inhale again, and he can be scared, and it’ll be okay.   
  
He says, “Can I help? With your creepy executive producer?”  
  
“My—oh. No, I can handle it. You’re on the other side of the country. And you should sleep. But thank you.”  
  
“You told me not to say it. You don’t get to, either, then.”  
  
“…hmm.”  
  
“So there.”  
  
“Yes, well… _plimba ursu_ to you, in that case.”  
  
“Something about bears?” He tucks one foot under himself, in the chair. “You know I love it when you talk dirty about wildlife.”  
  
“I do remember your interest in yaks. That one…literally it translates as…walk the bear…but I more or less told you to get the fuck out. We take bears very seriously. I don’t mean it, though, don’t hang up. What time is your morning call?”  
  
“Six.” There’s a dwindling sense of apprehension, but nowhere near as bad. He’ll manage. He’ll probably fuck up once or twice, but everyone else will too. Hemsworth will laugh at his own jokes, and Robert will improvise random dialogue and make them all crack up, and the weight of the world’s easing out of his chest at last. “Walk the bear? Really?”  
  
“I save my best profanities for you,” Sebastian agrees, and Chris thinks he must be smiling, on the other end. “You realize it is almost three. You should sleep.”  
  
“I know, I know…”  
  
“I’m not getting off the phone until you’re in bed. Asleep. Not faking it.”  
  
“Oh, God,” Chris says, “it’s like being friends with my mother,” but his chest feels wonderfully warm, inside. Blankets around his heart. “How’d you even know if I was faking it, anyway?”  
  
“I’ve watched you sleep on set.” Sebastian stops again. “Oh. Sorry. Far too…what was your word? Creepy. I just meant you fell asleep a lot between takes. Are you in bed yet?”  
  
“Going now. Are you going back inside? After this? You should be someplace warm.” He doesn’t want to get off the phone. Doesn’t have to, though. Sebastian promised to stay on the line. Until he can sleep. With that voice in his ear.  
  
“I should. Not yet. I like it out here. The stars, and you. Want me to sing to you?”  
  
“You want to sing me to sleep?” He slides down into the luxurious arms of the bed. Lights off, but window open. City glimmer and faint star-gleam. The same stars Sebastian’s seeing, in California. “Sure. Go on.”  
  
“I won’t if you’re going to be sarcastic about it.”  
  
“I wasn’t,” Chris says, and looks at the phone a bit helplessly, and tries again. “I wasn’t. Really. I would—yes. If you want to. I’d like it. If you wanted to.”  
  
Sebastian doesn’t say anything for long enough that Chris starts to wonder whether he’s just accidentally done irreparable harm to their friendship, one clumsily wrong inflection plus Sebastian’s uncanny ability to be unsure of his own welcome. But then, very softly, he catches a melody, and words.  
  
“…Sinatra?”  
  
“I like the nineteen-fifties. Go to sleep.”  
  
“‘Paper Moon’?”  
  
“Sleeping people can’t talk, Chris, you understand. And it’s only a canvas sky, hanging over a muslin tree…”  
  
“But it wouldn’t be make-believe,” Chris whispers, “if you believed in me…”  
  
Sebastian’s breath skips, one fleeting unguarded inhale. “I do. _Din toată inima._ Obviously. Stop interrupting. It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, phony as it can be…but it wouldn’t be make-believe…if you believed in me…”  
  
Chris shuts his eyes. Lets that beautiful elegant voice enfold him. The pillowcase is cool on his face, and the phone’s stuck to his cheek on the other side, and the morning’s on the way, no longer insurmountable but safe. Safe because of Sinatra and starlight and Sebastian Stan. The world feels right. The world feels like love.  
  
He falls asleep partway through “You Make Me Feel So Young.” His last memory isn’t of the song, not exactly, though he’ll never forget it. He falls asleep, though, thinking of the conviction in Sebastian’s voice when saying _I do_.  
  
  
  
 _two years and six months ago: Sebastian_  
  
Chris falls asleep halfway through the third song. Sebastian whispers, “You make me feel like there are songs to be sung, and bells to be rung,” and stops, voice shaking just a fraction.  
  
Relief. Trepidation. Gratitude. He’s done the right thing, or the right enough thing; he’s been here for Chris, he’s been a good friend, he’s helped. The idea’s warmer than the evening breeze. He’s helped Chris. And he’s so honored to’ve been allowed to try.  
  
The palm trees wave idly, disinterested darker outlines against the midnight-velvet sky. The stars twinkle. New frontiers.  
  
He did tell Chris that story. Telescopes and coming to America. And Chris listened. Understood. Didn’t pity him.  
  
Of course Chris doesn’t know all the stories. But still—  
  
But still. Maybe he can have this. This much, at least.  
  
With all my heart, he’d said. He’d meant every word.  
  
The gate creaks. He turns, but can’t summon up the will to glare at it, even though it’s got a bit of his scarf stuck like a trophy to the iron. The gate and the stars and the glowing dim lights in the empty pool are all part of the night. This night, when he’s been able—fantastically, amazingly, incredibly—to be what Chris needs.  
  
He might, getting up from the deck chair, perform a very tiny victory dance. It might involve a lot of jumping up and down in silent thankful elation. No one’s going to see him except the palm trees, and they won’t tell.  
  
With some reluctance, he wanders back to the creaking gate. Pauses, hand on the faded iron.  
  
He’ll go back in. He’ll go back in and let the executive producers buy him drinks and talk about the future of their fantasy fairytale series, which does sound intriguing, and the recurring role’s a good one, multilayered and ambivalently not-quite-heroic. They’ve mentioned a potential spin-off show for him. He won’t say no outright. He does have a contract with Marvel. And he might be able to get out of that one, with some negotiation, but he won’t.  
  
Marvel means Chris. And it’s as simple as that.  
  
He knows he’s not the best at giving the clear and forceful no. He _is_ genuinely appreciative of the opportunities. The interest.  
  
He picks sapphire thread off the iron, thinking. His fingers’re cold. The euphoria’s fading, present but distant, now. A memory to come back to, to unfold like a treasured last love-note in the impending darkness of the night.  
  
He knows how the next few hours will go. He knows he’ll say yes to the recurring role and attempt to avoid commitment to the spin-off series and then feel guilty. He knows that uninvited hand will slide up his leg again, with an exhaled breath like whisky and cigarettes and sweat, and he knows exactly what his own reputation is, what men want when they look at him. He knows he’s lucky to be working at all.  
  
He told Chris he could handle it. Not a lie. After all, he’s done it before.  
  
Chris. He shuts his eyes. Whispers, “If you believed in me,” to the night, to the hinges of the gate, to the weight of the mobile phone in his pocket.  
  
He hops over the gate—sacrifices another bit of scarf to the sharp-toothed spikes, gives up, and leaves the whole thing there, tied in place like a last defiant banner—and walks back into the bar. And he smiles, and he flirts back, very tastefully, very bashfully, when smiled at.  
  
And then he widens eyes at the overweight and lecherous producer, emphasizes his accent for maximum naïve effect, insists on doing multiple vodka shots—“it’s a celebration, is it not? It’s tradition, in my country, that we get drunk together; wouldn’t you enjoy that, with me?”— and puts up with the increasingly heavy petting until the man’s eyes close and he slumps over on the bar.   
  
Sebastian sighs, drops his face into his hands—his head’s spinning, and while he can in fact drink more than people assume he can, some sort of lucky inherited hidden talent, this one’d taken far too much effort—and then hears quiet sardonic applause, and snaps his head up, which. Not the best idea.  
  
“Ow,” he says, mostly because he’s very very drunk and is exhausted from the emotional whiplash and has no reserves left for politeness. Even when the person applauding is the other ABC representative, who’s been watching the dance of the evening with unreadable eyes.  
  
“Sorry,” he adds, because he’s pretty sure he should be apologizing for something, given the fact that there’s a passed-out executive’s hand on his waist and he’s going to need to throw up soon, not strictly because of the copious amounts of alcohol.  
  
The other man grins. “Don’t be. I’m congratulating you. It’s been years since I’ve seen anyone handle him like that. You got balls, kid.”  
  
“…thank you?” At the moment he’s got a vicious headache and the desire to go hide beneath his hotel shower until he feels human again, but somehow he’s impressed someone, so okay. That makes about as much sense as anything else does tonight. As impossible as Chris wanting him. As himself being the person Chris calls for support.  
  
“I’m emailing the contract to your agent.” With a few taps on the phone. “Call us tomorrow…nah, not tomorrow. I’m surprised you’re upright and talking, frankly.”  
  
“It won’t last,” Sebastian says, too tired to be tactful. “I’ll probably vomit on his shoes. Oh God I’ve said that out loud, _futu-i, Dumnezeule,_ I’m so sorry, thank you, I’m sorry about this.”  
  
“No, I’m enjoying the mental picture. Here, though, get yourself a ginger ale or something, and call me after you throw up on him, yeah?” The man wanders off, presumably to his own room. Sebastian stares at the hundred-dollar bill as it lands on the bar in front of him. He’s not sure whether to be proud of himself or disgusted or simply numb.  
  
Chris, he thinks. What would Chris say? What _would_ Chris say? There’s no good answer here; what else could he have done? Hit a producer in the face? Caused a scene in the hotel? He can’t, he never could, maybe someone else could’ve, but he knows himself well enough, honest in the face of the past and the coldness of the vodka, to know he couldn’t.   
  
Someone had wanted him. He’d’ve gone along.   
  
Except he’d been talking to Chris. And those two moments just don’t exist in the same plane. Chris had listened to him babble about space and telescopes. Had wanted to hear him sing.  
  
“Hey.” The bartender materializes in front of him. Sebastian jumps. Blinks. Back to the present. Right.  
  
“Here.” A can of ginger ale. And an unopened bottle of aspirin. “On the house. I was watching.”  
  
“I’m…very sorry. About drinking all your vodka. You don’t have to—”  
  
“It was totally in a good cause,” the man says, “don’t worry about it, and I’ll take care of this,” delivered with a wave at the unconscious body. Sebastian nods because he’s too off-balance to protest the anonymous kindness at the moment, and accepts a steadying hand on his arm while rediscovering his feet.  
  
Eventually, he finds his hotel room. Strips off jacket and shirt and jeans and stumbles into the shower. The water burns across bare skin like penance. But it’s a reminder, too, of other water. Poolside serenity. A voice on the telephone.  
  
He did help Chris. He believes that. And he’s not going to tell Chris this story, of course, but he likes to think that maybe if he did Chris would understand. Wouldn’t mind being his anchor, the reason he’s falling into his own bed, alone and untouched and safe, aspirin and water at hand.  
  
He types the _thank you_ on his phone, but doesn’t hit send. He’s sober enough to know that’s a bad idea. Anyway, Chris is asleep. And that’s a comforting thought.  
  
He wakes up at the tail end of morning to a sunbeam in his eyes and the sensation that his head’s about to split open, but he’s felt worse. And when he looks at his phone, there’s a message. A text. Two. From Chris.   
  
A picture of Mars. And then, underneath: _there could be bears on Mars. because Martian bears would be AWESOME._  
  
And then, two hours later, six minutes previously: _Sebastian? Are you mad at me?_  
  
Sebastian sits up immediately, ignores the hammers inside his skull, and types back _No of course not sorry just woke up are we talking about pre- or post-terraforming bears?_  
  
One minute later: _you just woke up?_  
  
Oh God. He hasn’t just made Chris picture him in bed, has he?   
  
_Late night. How are rehearsals going?_  
  
 _I think RDJ and Mark Ruffalo want Tony and Bruce to have a love story. And Joss keeps singing his stage directions as Sondheim tunes. They need me back in five._  
  
 _Sounds fun and oh okay—_  
  
 _Call you at lunch?_  
  
Sebastian, sitting there amid rumpled bedclothes and a Los Angeles morning, a bottle of water he doesn’t remember opening on the nightstand and a bruise on his hip from a too-hard pinch, actually puts a hand over his mouth, inadvertently.   
  
After one breath, two, he answers, a single letter at a time: _yes_.


	4. fear and hope in new york city

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian calls Chris for help. Chris gets to be there for Sebastian. (Also: check the warnings below!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** this chapter contains Sebastian being forced into non-consensual oral sex at a club, and calling Chris for help in the aftermath. If triggery, you may wish to start with the second section, the Chris POV part, or wait for the next chapter.
> 
> Notes: the untranslated bits of Romanian in Sebastian's phone call mean, respectively, "oh God," "I'm scared," and "help me." Everything else should be pretty obvious from context, I think? As ever, apologies if I've got something wrong; translations come from Google translate plus quick general internet search cross-check.

_two years ago: Sebastian_  
  
Sebastian doesn’t do this. More accurately, hasn’t done this for years. But he is tonight. Or he was. He’s about to walk away.  
  
He’s hiding, and that is the word, in the men’s room at the glitter-strewn club. Hiding from himself. From the man with whom he’d just been dancing, aggressive hands and razor-sharp eyes. From what he wants and doesn’t want.  
  
He doesn’t know. Not anymore.  
  
He’d thought he might, coming back to the scene. He’d wanted the release. The dizzy intoxicating high he remembers, drinks and light and sound and hands on bodies, every sense blurring into an ecstatic kaleidoscope.  
  
He’d thought: one night. One night for this. A break, a moment snatched away between the end of filming in Vancouver and the drive up to see his family tomorrow. A plane-ride back to New York, and one moment in which he might be able to forget everything, not an actor playing a part, not a son or a stepson, not a vaguely-recognized half-celebrity.  
  
It’s years since he’s done the club scene. He’d never been good at it. Never good at believing himself wanted.  
  
That part hasn’t changed. The part that has changed is that he’s in love, and he’s in love with his best friend, or the man he thinks of as his best friend, because he’s told Chris more about himself than he’s told anyone ever.  
  
It wasn’t enough. Or he wasn’t enough. He’s not talked to Chris for almost a month, somehow. No one’s fault. Incompatible schedules. Chris diving exuberantly into the last scenes of _Avengers_ , Sebastian running around being the Mad Hatter in a fairytale world and posing with Jennifer Morrison for publicity photos that’ve turned into a three-ring circus of rumors about them dating.  
  
He’d texted Chris after that one: _I think the American media has a fundamental misconception about the definition of “we’re just friends.” Is there some idiom I should know?_  
  
Chris hadn’t answered. Sebastian had waited a day, then inquired, _everything okay?_  
  
No answer to that either. All right, he’d thought. Understood.  
  
He wishes he had some idea what he’s done to fuck it up. He wishes he knew how to ask. He wishes he knew how to be the person Chris might want. He wishes he could know, just so he _can_ know, that Chris is okay, that Chris is happy, that Chris has someone to call during anxiety attacks, someone who’ll bring him coffee in the mornings, someone who’ll look at the stars with him once in a while.  
  
He wishes a great many things. For one, that he weren’t standing alone in a run-down men’s room in a tattered-sequin club trying, all at once, not to cry.  
  
He runs a hand through his hair. Glances at himself in the mirror. His eyeliner’s smudged, glittery and dark. His shirt’s too thin. And he feels old, and tired, and unspeakably weary down to his bones.  
  
The air’s cold in the restroom, no bodies in motion; he breathes in, tasting the chill. The bass beat thumps away beyond the doors.  
  
He looks at his reflection, and he wants to say he’s sorry, though for what, and to whom, he doesn’t know.  
  
The door swings open, and shut, off to the left. Sebastian turns.  
  
The man. That man. The one he’d been—  
  
The man has friends. Two.  
  
Sebastian says, “No.”  
  
“Fuckin’ tease,” the man says, and steps forward. “That ain’t nice of you, kid.”  
  
“Please,” Sebastian says this time. He knows it won’t work. It doesn’t.  
  
He puts up a decent fight—months of old Bucky Barnes soldier-training paying off—but in the end it’s three on one and the earlier tequila shots haven’t helped. When one of them slams his head into the wall, colliding sparks flare behind his eyes, frighteningly disorienting. He stops trying to kick. Can barely breathe.  
  
“Whore,” says the man in the orange shirt, almost pleasantly, and shoves him to his knees. “Open your filthy mouth, boy. Take it. Like you want to.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Sebastian says, on his knees on the men’s room floor, cement icy through his jeans, blood dripping along the side of his face.  
  
The backhand’s cruel and immediate. He’s kept upright by the grips on his shoulder, his neck. Hands tug his head back. One fastens over his nose. No air. Unless he opens his mouth.  
  
“Such a mouth on you,” the first man says. “Look at you. Made for sucking cock, aren’t you.” The scrape of the zipper echoes like doom.  
  
They use his mouth. His throat. Make him gag and choke and swallow, and what he can’t swallow spills from his lips, across his chin, dripping. Once or twice he thinks he might pass out, incoherent from the lack of air, iron length down his throat and that odd vertiginous faintness in his head, at his temple. If he passes out they might leave him alone.  
  
The one currently in front slaps him. The sting blooms like fireworks. He tries to gasp, to flinch away. Can’t.  
  
“Pretty,” mutters one of the others. “All beat up like that. Make him cry, Joe, c’mon…”  
  
By all means, thinks some detached distant part of Sebastian’s sanity. Go on, Joe. What more can you do, anyway, I’m already on my knees sucking your cock and quite possibly concussed and bleeding all over your expensive slacks…  
  
Joe grins. Wraps a hand into his hair. Yanks.  
  
Skin and sweat and foul bodies and the hardness of the cement under his legs. The copper of blood and the bitter hot taste of the men in his mouth. Salt and darkness, when he closes his eyes. The noises of thrusts, grunts, pants, slaps.  
  
They don’t fuck him in every conceivable way. Sebastian’s not sure whether they don’t feel up to anal sex tonight, or simply don’t have lube, or just collectively have a preference for his mouth. He’s grateful, briefly, for small favors; and then that far-off observing piece of his brain, the one that’s watching in clinical detachment, notes: you’re being grateful that they didn’t hurt you _more_. Brilliant, Seb. Well done you. Perfect victim.  
  
Lost in pain and relentless use, drifting, he stops thinking. They play with him, petting, mocking. Hands on his nipples. Between his legs. Half-conscious, he welcomes the respite: anything that isn’t cruel. They notice. Laugh.  
  
A hand wraps around his cock. Tugs. “You _are_ a little slut, aren’t you? Gettin’ off on this. Like it rough, do you, boy?”  
  
No. Yes. Sometimes yes. Not now, not like this. He’s never said yes to this. But his body reacts, betraying him in the face of sudden kindly handling. He wants to be sick.  
  
He knows he’ll come for them, if they let him.  
  
He knows he can’t say they’re wrong.  
  
He knows he’s here getting fucked—and that other word, the one he can’t even think because then the lack of consent has to be real—in a men’s room of a run-down trashy club in the worst part of New York City, and he did this, he came here, he walked into the club and let himself dance with men and forget who he was, forget everything he wasn’t, forget every way he wasn’t good enough, for a single hour of a single night.  
  
But he’s _not_ good enough. And he never will be. He’s not brave enough, he’s scared of flying and he forgets English words sometimes and has nightmares about faceless men in uniforms saying he’s not allowed to leave his house, no escape, no coming to America or anywhere else, and he’s never known how to be anyone’s friend, not properly, only going to let them all down eventually—  
  
Hands on his cock. On his nipples. Around his throat. Are they planning to _kill_ him?  
  
He thinks, very clearly: I’m sorry, Chris, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t be what you need anyway, not this person I am.  
  
Chris’s eyes, in memory, are kind.  
  
The hands don’t kill him. They lift away. Leave him collapsed on the floor, broken and sticky, tears and blood and saliva and come drying on his face, his jeans pulled down and his shirt torn. The men leave, too. The door swings shut behind them.  
  
Sebastian stays on the floor where they’ve put him. He can’t move. Even a single finger-twitch feels like an odyssey. He wants to vomit, and can’t even do that. He wants to black out, and his mind refuses to cooperate, choosing to instead catalogue every agonizing second of what’s just transpired.  
  
The cement’s dirty and cool beneath his cheek. Wet, though that’s from his face. Overhead, bare light-bulbs swing, burning down. His throat feels shredded. Razed, like a battleground. Scorched earth.  
  
No one’s come into the men’s room since the beginning of it all. He wonders hazily whether his assailants had the foresight to put up an out-of-order sign. It’s the logical thing to do. Planning ahead.  
  
No one continues to come, and the lights swing loopily, glaring arcs of brightness in the ruined night. The wall has his blood on it, he observes. Red over grey. Kind of pretty. Festive.  
  
After a while he sits up. And he puts all the white-hot agony someplace in the back of his mind, and he gets to his feet, and runs water in the closest sink, and scrubs blood and semen and spit and tear-tracks from his face. His lips sting, torn. His throat…  
  
He doesn’t really want to think about that. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he can see the bruises, the clotted red line along his temple. The bleeding’s mostly stopped; he cleans up as best he can. Looks at himself again. Avoids meeting his own eyes.  
  
He touches his cheek, experimentally, along the edges of a purpling bruise. His fingers don’t feel like his. And he looks…he does look like…what they’ve said. If he walks back out into the club, everyone will see the bruises. They’ll also see the mess of his jeans, the wet spots, the evidence of his body. He knows what they’ll think.  
  
He rests fingers over his throat. Feels the motion when he swallows.  
  
He slips out of the men’s room and along the back wall, just another shadow in the billowing night. There’s a back door, an emergency exit. He uses it. The alarm should go off; by some miracle, it doesn’t. No one in the glittering crowd sees him leave.  
  
He waves at the first passing cab—so normal an act, waving, getting a cab—and gives the driver his address and shuts his eyes. He opens them to find that they’re outside his building, and he pays and ducks inside swiftly, knowing the driver’s eyes must be lingering on his backside, his stained jeans. He doesn’t look back.  
  
He makes it all the way into his apartment before the shaking begins. His hands end up trembling so badly he drops his keys, trying to set them on the counter. He forces himself to pick them up. To walk down the hall, to flip on the shower, to peel off devastated clothing and drop it all in a pile. Fabric sticks briefly to wounded skin. He yanks it off regardless. He’ll throw it all away tomorrow. Later. Next year. Once he can breathe.  
  
He turns the hot water up as far as it’ll go, and lets it scald his skin, lets it try its most compassionate best to wash away residue, memories, the brittle cold that’s seeped into his bones. He closes his eyes, as comforting drops spill through his hair. The scent of soap and the idea of being clean. The familiar faint spice of his shampoo. The tile he recognizes, on his shower walls, under his hand when he reaches out. He’s safe. If that’s the right word.  
  
He goes through all the shower motions five times. Between the fourth and fifth, he curls up on the floor of the shower and cries, softly, exhaustedly, hurting everywhere. The water falls down gently and carries the tears away down the drain. No judgment. Only calm irregular splashing drops, leaping companionably onto his hand.  
  
He gets out of the shower and pulls on the most comfortable outfit he owns, ridiculously fashionable yoga pants and his biggest oversized Rutgers sweatshirt and fuzzy socks because his toes’re cold, and he finds his first-aid kit and a rather inadequate bandage for the cut along his temple, and he makes tea with honey and lemon and then drops the jar of honey on the floor because he thinks he’s heard a noise.  
  
The noise turns out to be the wind, brushing curiously over windowpanes in the other room. I’m all right, he tells it silently, resting fingertips over the glass. I’m all right. I will be all right. Thank you. And the wind purrs, smoky and restless, in reply.  
  
He goes back to the kitchen and sighs soundlessly and cleans honey off his floor and cupboards—plastic jar, fortunately, thank God for convenient inventions and no broken glass—and then loses a bit of time, just sitting there on his kitchen floor, back against a cupboard, staring at the newly scrubbed tile and seeing nothing at all.  
  
The annoyingly self-aware bit of his brain pokes him after a while and says: you probably shouldn’t be alone. Given that he’s currently unable to make a cup of tea without panicking, this is likely true.  
  
His mobile phone’s on the table. Next to the tea. A marathon distance away from his spot on the floor.  
  
He kind of wants to cry again. The tears threaten, but don’t descend.  
  
The wind rattles past the window again, concerned. Right. He _is_ all right. He can do this.  
  
He pushes himself to his feet and wobbles over to the table and takes mobile phone and tea over to the couch and curls into cushions, under a blanket one of his mother’s friends sent last year from Vienna. He stares at the blank screen, and then finds himself dialing Chris’s number, because he’s alone and scared and he’s just been—and he can have this, he can let himself hear Chris’s voice, surely he can.  
  
Chris answers laughing, affectionate, distracted. “Ow—someone take the balloon away from Robert, please—sorry, sorry, we’re in Robert’s hotel room and some idiot named Jeremy Renner gave him inflatable balloons and you should see the shapes he can make with them. This is a new phone, by the way, same number though, I kept meaning to call you, I dropped the other one in a puddle, so if you sent me anything and I didn’t answer, that’s why, not that I think you did, that you’d want to—I thought maybe you just didn’t—ow, Robert, seriously, that doesn’t even look like a penis and I don’t want to be poked with it—here, hey, want to say hi?”  
  
Sebastian can’t talk. Chris sounds so beautiful. Happy, excited, surrounded by friends and film stars. Captain America, playing with balloons.  
  
“Sebastian?” Worried now. Apprehension creeping in around the corners of that Boston-boy voice. “I know you’re there, I can hear you breathing, you sound—wait. Hang on—” There’s a rustle of motion, the swing of a door, a click of closing. “Okay, I’m in the bathroom, they’re all locked out. Are you okay?”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth, and starts to cry. Oh God. Oh, no, not now, not now, but he can’t seem to stop, faced with the instant care and concern on the other end—  
  
“Okay,” Chris says, “okay, I’m here, fuck, what happened? Can you talk to me? What’s wrong?”  
  
“I—can’t—” How can he? How can he tell Chris this story, Chris who’s so generous and warm-hearted and open, who has a life that doesn’t include him? “I just—wanted to hear you—can you talk to me? Please?”  
  
“Of course.” Chris is frowning, though. Sebastian can hear it. “But you do sound…okay, this’s going to come out really awful, like patronizing or something, but I’m asking because I want to know, I swear. Your voice is—and you sound scared. Are you all right? Do you need me to come over?”  
  
“I…don’t know…aren’t you filming? You’re busy filming.”  
  
“We’re filming in New York. Joss wanted one more bonus scene. Last day, even. Why the balloons. Are you at home? Where are you? I’ll come get you.”  
  
“I’m at home,” Sebastian says, giving up. The world makes no sense and the only real warmth left is on the other end of the phone and he wants more than anything to be held, even if it’s just the offer of a friend. “Yes. Please—please come over, I can’t, I don’t want to be alone, I don’t know what to do, I spilled honey all over my kitchen and I think I’m bleeding again and I can still _taste_ them, _Dumnezeule, mi-e frică,_ _ajutați-mă,_ please—”  
  
There’s a sound like shocked avalanches on the other end. “Fuck,” Chris says, “ow, what the fuck, did you just say—say that again, you’re _bleeding_ , and someone was there—someone _hurt_ you?”  
  
“…ow?”  
  
“My knee versus Robert’s sink. Standing up—Sebastian, if you’re hurt—are you still there? Say something!”  
  
“I’m here…I can’t quite breathe, that’s all…”  
  
“Okay,” Chris says, “okay, I’m here, I’m on the way, I’m coming now, just stay with me, please, okay? Slow breaths. In and out. Still here? Tell me you’re still here.”  
  
“Trying…I’m sorry…I didn’t want to bother you, _îmi pare rău,_ sorry, no, English—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve called, I should go—I’ll be all right—”  
  
“ _What_ the actual _fuck.”_ Chris sounds thunderously angry. Sebastian blinks. Wonders whether he should apologize again. His throat aches. The outlines of furniture, the lines of his walls, blur into a chalk painting under rain. Nothing defined. Nothing reliable.  
  
Nothing reliable except Chris. Still talking. “Don’t you dare hang up. Christ. Who ever made you think that I wouldn’t—that you’re not worth—you’re not fucking bothering me, you’re hurt and I’m coming over right the fuck now, understand?”  
  
“No…I don’t know…I think I’m going to pass out…”  
  
“Sebastian? Sebastian! Wake up, wake the fuck up and talk to me, come on!”  
  
Frightened. Shouting. Chris shouldn’t be frightened. Through the dizziness and the airlessness, he manages, “I’m here.”  
  
“Oh thank God—” There’s some background noise. Other Avengers, attracted by the shouting. Muffled frantic chatter. Chris gets back on the line. “Sebastian? Say something!”  
  
“Chris…”  
  
“Okay, that’s good, you can talk—yes—still me, I’m here, I’m right here, I promise. Same address? Your place?”  
  
Of course Chris knows his New York address. Chris sent him a holiday card, last year. With a _Winter Soldier_ first-edition comic-book and a scribbled note: _fingers crossed?_  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“I’m on the way. I’m borrowing Robert’s car. Keep talking. You said you were bleeding. Do you have a first-aid kit? Anything?”  
  
“I tried.” He sits up a bit more. Focuses on Chris’s voice. A tether in the red and black. The room decides to get correspondingly less fuzzy, with that anchor in place.  “It’s not that bad…I just…I think my hands were shaking. I can put pressure on it— _fut_. Fuck. Sorry. Ow.”  
  
“Two minutes. Can you tell me what happened? Was someone in your apartment?” Road noise. Wind. Chris plainly defying speed limits and elements to rush to his side. Sebastian wants to be comforted, and wants to laugh, ugly and raw, at the way Chris can’t even imagine the truth.  
  
“No…not here…not in the apartment…will you talk to me? I like your voice.” Too honest; but what the hell. “Please.”  
  
“Of course.” Chris sounds like someone trying not to sound desperately afraid. “What do you want me to talk about? Space travel? Paul Newman movies? I know you can quote all of _Cool Hand Luke_ at me, I’ve heard you do it, I can try to keep up. I’m better at _Butch Cassidy_ , but you probably can do that one too, right?”  
  
“For a moment there I thought we were in trouble,” Sebastian says, and kind of wants to laugh again, through the tears and the shakiness and the pain. That quote, that line, right now.  
  
Chris obviously hears the absurd terrible perfection too, from the resultant quick inhale. But only says, “I’ll even buy you a bicycle. Okay, I’m on your street. Why is there no fucking parking on your street?”  
  
“Try around the corner. I never…don’t laugh if I tell you this…I never actually had a bicycle. Growing up.” He’s looking at the door. He’ll have to unlock it to let Chris in.  
  
But he can. He thinks he can. He can get up, with the blanket wrapped around him and Chris’s voice in his ear, and he can open the door and find Chris on the other side.

  
  
 _two years ago: Chris_  
  
Chris flings himself up the stairs—elevator too slow, and he needs to be in motion, needs to run—and sprints down the hall and skids to a halt in front of the blank-faced door. Pants into the phone, “Okay, I’m outside, if someone knocks it’s only me, right, I don’t want to—”  
  
The door opens before he can say _I don’t want to scare you,_ though he’s already trying to retract the words. Patronizing. Insulting. No.  
  
His heart turns over with grief and anger in his chest, when he looks at Sebastian.  
  
Sebastian, framed by the lines of the doorway, is beautiful and fragile and brave. Enormous eyes and too-white skin and dark hair.  Poise like a desperate fawn surrounded by hunters’ guns: the stillness of courage and despair.  
  
He seems smaller than usual, or maybe that’s just the oversized sweatshirt and blanket he’s buried in. His lips are too pale. Vital color drained away.  
  
Color’s present, though. In the bruises visible around his neck where the blanket’s slipped. In the larger bruise along the side of his face, and the red that’s sneaking insidious tendrils out from under a crooked bandage.  
  
Too _much_ color. Hideous color. Blasphemous and visceral. Chris doesn’t know what to say. What words can be enough. They’ve all turned to inadequate dust.  
  
“Hi,” Sebastian says, and even his voice is—  
  
“Oh God,” Chris breathes, and the words scrape their way out like crumbled autumn leaves. Like the roughness in _Sebastian’s_ voice, once-elegant melody torn to shreds. “You—I mean—oh God…”  
  
“You came,” Sebastian says, “you came, you’re here, _mulțumesc_ , thank you, thank you, I—come in, sorry,” and then takes a step back, out of the doorway.  
  
Chris takes the step in, kicking the door shut, turning the lock because he knows it was locked, thinks that has to help, surely, the idea of security—  
  
He looks at Sebastian’s face. Those summer-ocean eyes are huge and trembling, and they find his with a kind of terrified heartbreaking desolate hope, as if Sebastian can’t quite believe that he’s real but wants very badly to try.  
  
Chris says, “I’m here,” and Sebastian nods and then starts shaking all over, not just trembling behind the eyes but everywhere; Chris takes another step forward and holds out both hands and Sebastian crumples into his arms and they end up sitting on the floor in the entryway, one of Chris’s hands cradling dark hair and that head on his shoulder, the other rubbing slow circles over Sebastian’s back while the tears come.  
  
“I’m here,” he says again, “I’m here, you’re okay, you’re safe, I’ve got you, you’ll be fine, you _are_ fine, you called me, you can do anything,” and gets Sebastian more comfortably into his lap, still talking, murmuring words, snatches of song lyrics, hummed bits of Sinatra and B.J. Thomas, anything and everything he can think of. Holding on. Being there.  
  
The wall’s firm and strong behind his back. He makes his arms strong, too. A fortress. A protective barricade. A shield.  
  
Sebastian tries to whisper something that sounds like “sorry” into his shoulder. “Don’t even,” Chris says, and tips his head to rest against that wounded one. Wavy hair tickles his cheek, kitten-soft and yearning. “I don’t care if you cry all over this shirt. I’ve been meaning to wash it anyway.”  
  
This gets a noise that’s next-door to a laugh, which turns back into sobs, though those’re beginning to fade. Chris keeps the arms around him, breathes in the scent of him—soap, spice, warmth, fuzzy yarn from the blanket—and sketches the Captain America shield over his back, which makes Sebastian almost-laugh again, albeit unsteadily. “…really?”  
  
“Hey, it’s important. I’m glad I met you. Don’t even start to think about moving. You’re not heavy.”  
  
“I am…but I won’t…” Sebastian tucks his face back into Chris’s neck. Breathes. Chris can feel it. “Thank you.”  
  
“No. If anything I’m thanking you. For calling. And no, you’re not. Seriously. I could do this all night.” He strokes a hand over all the plaintive hair. It winds around his fingers, clinging, forlorn. “Don’t talk, if it hurts. I want to know what happened, but give it a minute, okay?”  
  
One more nod. Voiceless. Chris can only imagine, and try not to imagine, how words feel.  
  
He moves a knee. Gets that more or less cradling Sebastian too. The whole apartment’s very quiet, watching, surrounding them with care. The space reflects its owner: lovely, stylish, sweet, bashful, eager, sneakily shyly playful. The sleek obsidian of a small piano shimmers concern at them. The bookshelves, caught in the process of overflowing, spill worry along with copies of Stephen Hawking and Karel Čapek. Sebastian apparently picks furniture for both color-coordinating qualities and comfort, if the pillowy sofa’s any indication.  
  
The floor’s not bad either. It’s a nice floor, polished and serene. They can stay on this floor, in the entryway, all night, if that’s what Sebastian needs.  
  
But there’s a sigh gusting over his skin, and blue eyes lift to find his. They’re red-rimmed and even brighter than usual, but maybe possibly potentially a fraction less shattered. Chris holds his breath. Sebastian finds a smile, or the ghost of one, haunting the curve of those lips. “I can’t say thank you?”  
  
“Nope. Sorry. Want to move to the couch? Want me to make you tea?”  
  
Another smile, more certain and less phantasmal. And Sebastian accepts his hand, getting up.  
  
Chris, now faced with his own spontaneous offer and the instant kettle, pokes buttons dubiously. “Just so you know, I’ve never made tea. Like…ever. Does it work like coffee _don’t get up from the couch_ or is there something I need to know?”  
  
Sebastian gives him a fairly successful attempt at a who-me-I-wasn’t-moving expression. About eighty percent convincing. Only a few obvious cracks in the world.  
  
Chris swallows. Breathes. Waits. He can’t push for answers, not until they’re offered. No matter how fiercely his hands ache for action.  
  
“Just make hot water. Use the teabags. I won’t make you cope with proper loose-leaf. I do also have coffee, if you want any. I have that for mornings.” And then, half under his breath, low enough that Chris isn’t sure he’s meant to hear: “ _prea adorabil_ ,” and something that might be “why now” or “unfair.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Honey. On the counter.”  
  
“…right.” He’s one hundred percent sure that hadn’t been about the honey. Still: no pushing.  
  
A tiny voice in the back of his head wonders whether the word for _adorable_ might be nearly the same in Romanian. And then he squashes that voice. Ruthlessly. Sebastian’s _hurt_. Not the time for those thoughts. If there ever is a time for those thoughts.  
  
If Sebastian might ever want to be touched by him, by anyone, again.  
  
The wind comes back and yelps mournfully beyond the picture window. Chris watches honey tumble from spoon into mug, a hypnotizing stream of amber sweetness. He’s sickeningly aware of all the possibilities. Of how badly Sebastian might in fact be hurt, under all the protective clothing-layers. He’s been thinking one word, the worst potential word, ever since Sebastian’d started crying like the collapse of the universe over the phone.  
  
His hand shakes. Fortunately, he’s not facing the sofa. Those splintered-ocean eyes won’t see.  
  
He brings the tea over and sits down—not too close, not making any demands, but hopefully close enough for support—and holds out a hand. Sebastian takes it, and then studies their fingers for a few minutes, idly running a thumb over the back of Chris’s hand, wrist, bones. He’s curled up under the blanket again, long-legged feline grace at once familiar and not. Every tiny wince while shifting position makes it all apocalyptically wrong. Spears through Chris’s heart. Sharp-edged as despair.  
  
Sebastian takes a sip. “Not bad. You plainly have well-hidden tea-related super-powers.”  
  
“I’ll only use them on your behalf.” Light words. Teasing. Careful. So very careful. “Can you…do you want to…it’s okay if you don’t…”  
  
“…want to talk about it?” Sebastian gazes down into the mug. Companionable steam wafts up to tangle in his eyelashes. “I don’t know. This…it isn’t…you’ve already done so much. I can’t.”  
  
“I want to know,” Chris says, and tightens his grip on the hand in his. “You can’t say anything that would make me leave now, come on, you think I’m scared off that easy, I’m insulted, honestly.” Inside his chest, his heart’s tearing itself in two. It will be that unspoken word, then. Four letters. Beginning with an r. And there’s nothing he can do to make it not have happened.  
  
“I’m better. I mean…I am feeling better. Now.”  
  
Chris opens his mouth.  
  
Sebastian looks up. “I’ll tell you. If you want to know.”  
  
One more time, then. All the reaffirmation. Always. “I do.”  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says, and takes a deep breath and another sip of tea. And then tells him. Quietly.  
  
Chris listens. Keeps an encouraging expression firmly fixed on his face. He wants Sebastian to go on. To say whatever words, given voice, might help contain and comprehend and ease the apocalypse.  
  
Inside he’s grinding teeth, clenching fists, swinging those fists into the faces of the men who’d done this. Inside he’s screaming rage and sorrow to the night.  
  
He holds Sebastian’s hand with all the gentleness he can muster. Tries to seem completely unthreatening. Supportive. Sympathetic. And he is, all of those. He’s also furious and in love and terrified in a way he’s never previously known.  
  
He could’ve lost Sebastian. If those men had wanted him dead—if they’d hurt him badly enough even on accident—if Sebastian hadn’t been able to move or call for help—  
  
He might _still_ lose Sebastian. Not in the same irrevocable eternal-cemetery way, but he’s spoken to trauma survivors, to counselors, on occasion. He knows that recovery’s never simple nor straightforward nor assured.  
  
Sebastian tells him that it’s not quite as bad as he thinks. That the absolute worst, physically speaking, hadn’t occurred. That—again, physically—it’s only the bruises, and the bad cut, and, of course, his throat.  
  
This doesn’t help. Maybe a hairsbreadth. Not much.  
  
“Anyway.” Sebastian stops, drinks more tea, winces—hot liquid over wounded flesh—and shuts his eyes, and then reopens them, oceans distressed but also oddly steady. Tides finding rhythm, even while harried by storms. “I think…I’m not all right, obviously. But…better. With you. _Cu tine.”_  
  
“With me…” Chris remembers to breathe. Lifts a hand—motion clearly telegraphed, slow, cautious—and doesn’t quite touch Sebastian’s face. “Can I see? How bad?”  
  
“ _Da_. Yes.”  
  
“Okay, I’ve got that one, I _have_ figured out yes and no, I’m slow but I get there eventually.” Teasing; it works, as Sebastian smiles, relaxing a fraction. _“Cred că eşti minunat.”_  
  
“All right, that’s not fair.” He finds himself smiling too. Sheer relief. Not weightless, but overwhelming. Sebastian’s teasing him back.  
  
He tilts Sebastian’s head, gingerly, for a better look. Lifts up the corner of the sloppy bandage. Swears, but only internally. And in English, because that’s all he’s got.  
  
“I could say it in German. Or French. _Că doare ca dracul—!”_  
  
“Sorry!”  
  
“No, it’s fine…ow…I don’t actually need my head, anyway…”  
  
“I like your head. Can I clean this up a little? Also, what did you say?” He puts Sebastian’s hand there, keeping pressure on the cut, and glances around. “First-aid kit?”  
  
“Under the sink. Bathroom sink, I mean. Which time?”  
  
“Both.” He runs. And runs back. Sebastian hasn’t moved, one hand in  obedient place, the other cradling tea like a last promise of salvation, hair falling into one eye with the next sip. Chris’s fingers tingle with the need to brush it back. “Are you feeling dizzy? Nauseated?”  
  
“Not…no, wait, that’s not true. Lightheaded. Earlier, but it never went away for good. Everything’s too…” A handwave, as Chris takes over the first-aid duties. “ _Strălucitor_. Bright. Brilliant. Sharp.”  
  
Chris bites his lip. Doesn’t let his hand tremble. “Concussion? Or you’re just trying to get out of translating what you said.”  
  
“You’ve caught me. Curses.” Sebastian shuts his eyes again. Chris’s heart skips a beat. It’s getting used to that, tonight.  
  
He says, “Are you all right?”  
  
“Fine. That stings, whatever you put on it…that’s more or less what I said, the second time. With some invocation of the devil. Profanities, just for you.”  
  
“I cleaned it. Didn’t you?”  
  
“It _hurt_.”  
  
“It does that when you clean it. I think…I know you might not want…I think we should maybe call someone. A doctor. Just to be safe.”  
  
Sebastian glances away. “I don’t know…I did try to clean up. In the shower. I—never mind.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I…was going to say…it didn’t hurt as much then…but I’m not sure I’d’ve noticed.” A sigh, flimsy reconstructed walls of normality, of rueful acknowledgement. “I don’t think I was processing. Much. Scared…”  
  
“You’re all right,” Chris says helplessly, hopelessly, flinging weapons against the encroaching abyss. “You’re safe, I swear, I’ll be here, I’ll keep you safe. I mean. If you want me. I want to.”  
  
Sebastian blinks. Startled. But—gradually, tentatively, beneath bandages—also smiling. “Chris…yes. If you want to, yes. What I said, the first time…you want to know…”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“It hurts to _blush_ ,” Sebastian mutters, and actually puts a hand over the uninjured side of his face, and then peeks out between fingers regardless. “I never knew it could hurt to blush, _la naiba_ …all right, I…might’ve called you…wonderful.”  
  
Chris sits there and stares. Openmouthed with delight.  
  
“You could say something!”  
  
“I could,” Chris agrees, dazed and astounded and in love, crazy upswell of happiness racing along his veins. This isn’t the right moment, neither of them rational, all adrenaline and aftermath; Sebastian’s hurt and Chris is here to help and the emotions’re too intense for decisions and confessions this immense. Hell, Sebastian might not even mean it the way Chris wants him to. Might be saying the word to a friend, the friend who’s held him and made him tea. Chris does comprehend that. Logically.  
  
But Sebastian called him wonderful.  
  
He wants to dance on rooftops. To sing it in the rain.  
  
Also Sebastian’s looking at him, lips slightly parted, expression hovering between dismay and hope, gloriously beautiful in the night.  
  
The wind cheers, rattling the stars in celebration.  
  
Chris says, “You know I think you’re wonderful too, I mean—you know what I mean—you always know what I mean, you’re amazing, you’re—incredible. Thank you for calling me. Thank you for—I do want to be here, of course yes, always yes. Can I hold you? Is that…okay?” Too many adjectives. Too much flailing. Incoherent, and now of all times. He wants to kick himself.  
  
But Sebastian, who _does_ always magically know what he means, what he needs, what he wants, says, “ _Da_. Very much yes. And you can…if you think we need to…call someone…you can. Not yet. I called you because I did want that, I wanted you to hold me, please.”  
  
So Chris promptly offers his arms—and his heart, of course, freely given, wholly Sebastian’s, always has been—and Sebastian settles into encircling strength, not afraid to be held, not afraid to be close, the two of them on the friendly sofa amid the folds of knitted blanket and the cooing of the wind.


	5. chocolate ice-cream for breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath, healing, good mornings, possible first kisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chris Evans is a classic rock fan. I couldn't resist. :-)

_ two years, minus two weeks, ago: Chris _   
  
Chris stays the whole night. And the night after. And somehow the night becomes one week. Two.   
  
He wants to stay forever. More: he wants Sebastian to believe that he wants to stay forever. The two of them, here in this one-bedroom apartment full of books and piano-music and startlingly black morning coffee and honeyed tea. Here together.   
  
The first night, he holds Sebastian for hours. Some part of his heart’s marveling that he _can_. Another part’s fretting persistently over details: will Sebastian want to file a police report? How soon should he call a doctor? Sebastian said not yet, asked to be held; but with what sounds like a concussion and…the other things…he needs to be checked out by someone. Somehow. Somewhere.   
  
Sebastian’s crying again, soundless, tears damp over Chris’s shirt. “Shh,” Chris breathes, and then, belatedly, “I don’t mean you can’t cry—cry if you want, absolutely, sorry, sorry—just breathe, too, okay? I’m here. I’ve got you.”   
  
“I know…” Long eyelashes sweep down, up; Sebastian scrubs an impatient hand over his face, sitting up. “I don’t know why I’m—I feel okay, I swear—oh, _rahat_ , not okay, but you know.” A shrug, or what might’ve been a shrug without the interruption of a wince. “I just can’t…it won’t shut off.”   
  
This is delivered plaintively enough to be an attempt at humor; Chris, courage for courage, reaches over and collects one shining drop of diamond with his thumb. Sebastian blinks, and a few more diamond-dust shards twinkle but don’t fall. “Oh…thank you.”   
  
“Hey, I told you, I don’t care if you cry all over me. I’ve done it to you.” He’s not moved the hand. His thumb’s memorizing the softness of golden skin, wan and salt-tracked but perfect regardless. Sebastian miraculously doesn’t flinch from the touch. Chris wants to believe that’s because it’s him touching. He knows it might simply be shock.   
  
“Not quite the same. I couldn’t…I wasn’t there…I wanted to be. For you.”   
  
“You were.” He takes a breath. “You were. If you feel up to it…not a hospital, but…”   
  
Sebastian nods, eyes uncertain but trusting. Chris flips through mental options. The wind murmurs wistfully out in the night. And the air tastes like tea. Like hope.   
  
“…I’ve got an idea.”   
  
“Oh, by all means.” Sebastian watches interestedly, tucked back under his blanket, vulnerable and valiant under stripes of woolly brown and black and grey. “I approve of you having ideas. Like the time you decided we should replace Hugo’s Red Skull costume with his _Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_ feathers. I was very impressed.”   
  
“You helped sneak the feathers in, you remember. And then got away with it by looking innocent and blaming me. Which, hey, really not fair, you’ll have to teach me that sometime. Hang on.” He’s calling Robert. Because Robert will know someone, or at least know who else to call. It’s the best inspiration he’s got.   
  
Robert, to his everlasting credit, doesn’t demand explanations or details. Only asks whether there’s anything he can do, promises to explain to Joss where his Captain America’s gone, and suggests two names who might make discreet but professional house calls at one am in New York City.   
  
“Give them my name. And mention the elephant. Anything else?”   
  
“No…thanks.” Elephant, Chris files in a mental corner. Not the time to ask. Later. Definitely later.    
  
“Any time,” Robert says, “whatever you need, I can make it happen, I can do anything, seriously, I mean that,” and hangs up. Chris glances from phone to Sebastian, and panics all over again. “Wake up!”   
  
“… _mama dracului_ —do you have to shake me, I’ve already got bruises there—”   
  
“You can’t fall asleep with a concussion! Also sorry!”   
  
“I wasn’t—well, not successfully…no, all right, I’m awake. Sorry. I do know better. I was just trying not to focus on anything. I’m not asleep.”   
  
“Right,” Chris grumbles, unconvinced, and stares pointedly at him while making the call. Sebastian, after approximately five seconds, starts making faces at him in response, which forces Chris to put a hand over his mouth so as not to laugh into the speaker, panic draining into giddy release.   
  
Sebastian’s okay. Exhausted and shaken and injured, but okay. Still the person who knows exactly how to make Chris laugh. To make Chris smile.   
  
The first name on Robert’s list answers drowsy and yawning, but snaps to attention when Chris starts talking, and poses reassuringly confident questions about coherence and first aid. The man shows up twenty minutes later, bag in hand; Chris gets the door and then sprints back to Sebastian’s side, arm resettling where it should be around blanket-wrapped shoulders.    
  
Sebastian handles the physical exam with unbelievable poise, holding himself together in the face of calm authoritative competence, answering questions in a more or less steady voice. The doctor does ask him to pull up the sweatshirt, briefly; Sebastian looks at Chris. Chris keeps a hand on his shoulder. They get through it. Together.   
  
The man does ask for a blood sample. Sebastian shuts his eyes. Nods. Offers an arm. Chris starts to ask why, and then, before the thought’s even fully formed, knows.   
  
He can literally feel the blood drain from his face. Funny. He’d always thought that was an exaggerated cartoon metaphor.   
  
Of course none of the men had worn a condom. Of course Sebastian knows nothing about their history. And those open wounds, raw torn skin…   
  
The worst part is the way Sebastian simply accepts the need. The worst part is the way blue eyes stay closed, slumped shoulders speaking only resignation and not horror. Something in Chris’s chest tightens, mute and agonized.   
  
The doctor promises to call with results. Sebastian nods again. Chris squeezes his hands. All he can do.    
  
After an eternal delay, he gets a squeeze in return, though weary-sky eyes don’t look up. Fascinated by the weave of the blanket, by a loose loop of yarn.   
  
The man glances at Chris. “Can I talk to you? For a minute?”   
  
“Oh…um, yeah, sure…Seb—”   
  
“Go on.” Pale and lovely, worn out and resolute; and Sebastian does look at him, then, as if Chris is the one who needs comforting. That voiceless agony twists again in his chest. Sebastian adds, “I’ll be fine. Just…be quick. If you can.”   
  
“One minute. I swear.”    
  
“You can even have two, I’ll survive…”   
  
“Rest your voice,” Chris says, “drink your tea, I made it for you, I’ll make you more, super-powers, remember,” and gets up.   
  
Around the corner, in the hall, he crosses his arms. “Forty seconds.”   
  
The doctor sighs. “I am friends with Robert, you know. I can tell him if you decide to throw a shield at me. No offense.”   
  
“Thirty.”   
  
“Fine. Look, as far as I can tell, he’s okay. He’s amazingly resilient, in fact, though I suspect a large part of that is due to you, and that’s going to be crucial, having you as a supportive partner, so—”   
  
Chris misses the next few words, because his brain’s temporarily stuck on _partner_.    
  
Himself. And Sebastian. It’s a good thought. Hearthfire-glow.   
  
“—and if he does want to talk to anyone, here are a few numbers you can call. Remember, you may need to remind him it’s not his fault that this—”   
  
“—sorry, _what?”_   
  
“Were you listening at all? I said it’s common—unfortunately—for some assault survivors, especially in cases like this, to blame themselves. He might tell you he went to the club, he dressed provocatively, and so on…don’t let him. He said no. He told me that. You may need to tell him.”   
  
“Oh God,” Chris says, through the hand currently over his mouth. He’s afraid he’s going to be sick. The idea that Sebastian might blame himself…might think this is in any way his fault…   
  
“Am I out of my minute yet? I think he’ll be all right, honestly. He seems to be coping pretty well. But he’ll need you here.” Assessing eyes skim his face. “And you’ll be here.”   
  
“Forever.” Completely honest. “As long as he wants me. I’ll be here.”   
  
“Okay, then. And now I’m going to go talk to him alone, and then I’m going to go back to sleep, and you can tell Robert we’re even for the elephant thing. Don’t ask.”   
  
“I…won’t?” Chris agrees, and waits in the hall while the man talks to Sebastian for a while, sitting with him on the accommodating couch. He can’t quite make out distinct words, only the rise and fall of voices; but judicious peeking around the corner provides glimpses of Sebastian nodding, glancing at the tea, half-smiling. Chris leans against the wall. It holds him up. Steadfast.   
  
They’re both smiling, Sebastian and Robert’s doctor, when they wave him back in. That has to be a good sign. He hopes.   
  
He walks the man out, locks the door, and turns around. “More tea? Or. Um. Anything?”   
  
“Sleep, I think…you know, you’re not terribly subtle when you’re eavesdropping. Or was that on purpose? Did you want me to see you?”   
  
“Um. Are you allowed to sleep? Concussion?”   
  
This gets him a raised eyebrow. “How much did you overhear? I don’t have a concussion as such. Only the worst headache in every known dimension. I thought you were listening.”   
  
“I tried.” Giving up. “You were too quiet. Sorry.”   
  
“Ah. To be fair…I was listening to yours. You said you’d stay. As long as I want you.”   
  
“Of course you were,” Chris says, “why am I not surprised,” and then the final words sink in. “Yes, of course, I’m not going _anywhere_ —”   
  
“You remember,” Sebastian interrupts, voice scratched and frayed but a song nonetheless, “the word for yes. You said you did.”   
  
Chris, through the heart newly fluttering in his throat, manages, “… _da?”_   
  
And Sebastian smiles. The universe, bruised and triumphant, quivers with light. “Yes.”   
  
They end up in Sebastian’s bed, fully dressed, under the covers. They end up holding each other, only that, in the dark; and it’s enough.   
  
Chris does make a half-hearted gesture in the direction of the couch, at first, once Sebastian’s in bed. He doesn’t want to—he wants to stay right next to those endless eyes and throw himself between them and any possible harm—but he’s very aware of his own size, his own muscles, his own strength. Another body, when Sebastian’s been confronted by too many, tonight.   
  
But one hand reaches out for his, and that tattered-banner accent breathes, “Stay,” and Chris does. Arms back in place around shoulders. Sebastian’s head on his chest. Blankets pulled up to nestle around them both. Sebastian’s bed isn’t enormous, but it’s not small; it fits them both, though barely. Anyway, the closeness feels good. For them both, he thinks, and watches Sebastian sleep for a while.   
  
Chris himself can stay awake all night, can be an anchor and a pillow and a sentry, anything, everything. He swears that to himself and to the soft grey cotton sheets and the dim shapes of bed and dresser and tabletop light. Anything. Everything.   
  
He falls asleep somewhere around sunrise, as the first rosy streaks lighten the window outside. He doesn’t even notice. Only wakes about an hour later to his head resting on Sebastian’s and a hand looped loosely around his wrist, as if even in dreams wanting to keep hold.   
  
Chris breathes out, listening to the rhythm of steady inhales and exhales against his shoulder. Lets himself, just for a moment, despite the awfulness of the night, despite the lingering cries of the wind, think: I love you, Sebastian Stan. I could wake up every morning just like this, you in my arms, and I’d be happy, and I love you.   
  
Sebastian awakens abruptly, with a small gasp and a shiver and a lost look in those eyes. After a second, coherence returns, plus some muttered profanities in various languages. Chris can only guess. Nightmares. Injuries screaming their presence anew. He finds the painkillers on the nightstand, and water. Strokes Sebastian’s hair, after, until the eyes slide shut again, until all the long limbs drift relaxed into sleep. Tries to radiate warmth for all that chilly golden skin.   
  
There’s an odd glow inside his chest. Sebastian called _him_ for help. Sebastian trusts him with this. Sebastian so rarely trusts anyone; those wry and elegant eyes smile readily but give away only surface passions, not the complicated depths beneath.    
  
He eases a foot, cautiously, into a better long-term position. Sebastian doesn’t wake, head tipping further onto Chris’s chest, the bandage on his face shockingly white against soft-kitten hair. Chris thinks about another night, a different phone call. About that flexible voice admitting, amused: _I wanted to be an astronaut, I bought my own telescope, my stepfather didn’t know what to get me…_   
  
There’d been affection in Sebastian’s voice, speaking of his stepfather. A hint of ruefulness, perhaps, but mostly love.   
  
There’s so much Chris doesn’t know. He wants to know. He wants to know it all, if Sebastian wants to tell him. Sebastian had wanted to tell him then, or at least had been willing to; had given over that piece of himself in order to ease Chris’s pain. Chris, then and now, is in awe.   
  
Sebastian called him, tonight. And Chris might not be the right person for this role, Boston kid with his own internal howling demons and external goofiness that he can never quite seem to tone down, but he’s incredibly incomprehensibly the person Sebastian wants. So he’ll do his damn absolute best to be right. To say thank you, not an obligation but honest and honored return of what Sebastian’s done for him. To learn how to make tea and translate obscure Romanian obscenities that mean the pain’s returning in full force. To offer shelter against the cold teeth of any predatory nightmares.   
  
And he’ll determinedly bury the small part of his heart—and the related less-small other aspect of his anatomy—that’s overcome with glee at his presence in Sebastian’s bed. Sebastian’s just been…hurt…and _can’t_ be asked to think about that now. Sebastian needs to feel safe, and _safe_ includes the certainty that Chris isn’t going to pounce on him in a fit of lust, no matter how good long-legged lean hunting-cat muscles feel draped along Chris’s own.    
  
Safe. Protected. Treasured. Chris can do that. That’s how he wants Sebastian to feel; he wants those blue-horizon eyes to light up and laugh again, forgetting any fear or doubt, internally or externally imposed. He wants, kind of a little bit selfishly, to be the person who’s here when that comes to pass, because it will, Sebastian’s strong enough for that, Sebastian’s already made _him_ laugh on this night of all nights. He just wants to be here.    
  
And he is here. Because Sebastian wants that too.    
  
The sun’s up now in full exuberant force; he can see it around the edges of drawn window-blinds. Sebastian decorates in shades of grey and black and brown, neutrals that somehow aren’t neutral at all because they’re so excited to be in this apartment; beckoning pops of color wink from paperbacks on the bookshelves, from photographs on the walls, from a sapphire-blue wool scarf contentedly forgotten on a chair-arm near the door. All the casual style’s a far cry from Chris’s pizza-and-beer place in Boston. But it feels the same somehow. Like he could get used to matching pillows and a baby piano, because they without question and with open arms want him around. Like home.   
  
He tips his head just enough that his cheek, the corner of his mouth, rests over Sebastian’s shower-and-spiced-soap fluffy hair. It’s almost a kiss, though not quite. It is, given their respective positions, perfectly comfortable.    
  
He doesn’t mention leaving, as the days turn into a week, and more. He’s not sure whether Sebastian knows it’s a deliberate omission, or remains too off-balance to’ve wondered about it. But neither of them mentions the idea.   
  
Sebastian has one or two more nightmares, in the grim-edged cracks of night-black, but they come infrequently, and seem to be easily defeated by Chris’s arms, by Chris’s voice singing nineteen-seventies Boston hits, “Long Time” and “Peace Of Mind” and “Feelin’ Satisfied.” Sebastian listens with musically-trained interest, the first time; Chris says, “What, you don’t know Boston? Classic rock?” and then wants to kick himself. Of course Sebastian doesn’t. Sebastian is elegant and refined and no doubt could perform classical piano scores as an infant, and even more importantly didn’t grow up in America, and there’re stories Chris doesn’t know about _that_ , too.   
  
“Sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. At least he’s provided a distraction from the clutching hands of shrouded dreams. That’s something.   
  
But Sebastian sits up a bit more. “No, do that one again. I like the melody. You’ve got to have rock and roll music—is that right?—to get you through the stormy weather…”   
  
“You got the words from one time through? Why am I surprised, never mind, okay, then…come on, put your hands together, you know it’s now or never, take a chance on rock and roll…”   
  
Sebastian jumps back in at the chorus. They finish the song together, voices blending and separating and catching up again through the dark. And then they run through “Don’t Look Back,” just because.    
  
Chris starts laughing at the end, for no real reason except boundless thrilled relief. Sebastian grins, that extraordinary curve of wide mischievous mouth. Familiar, heartbreakingly so, and happy, because Sebastian can _be_ happy. And Chris wants to laugh more, or cry, or kiss him.   
  
He settles for tugging Sebastian back into his arms. They fall back to sleep with Chris’s lips brushing soft unstyled hair again, breathing in the taste of him. Somewhere along the way this becomes routine, like black coffee in the morning and amiable debates over the _actual_ best Tennessee Williams play. Just the way they sleep, now, like a kiss.

 

_two years, minus two weeks, ago: Sebastian_  
  
Chris stays all night. Chris stays the night after. A week. Two.  
  
Sebastian can’t quite believe it. He does, because it’s real, because he wakes up that first morning to a heavy head atop his and a rather unromantic need to find his toilet because multiple cups of tea will do that, but instead he just lies in place for a minute absorbing the cadence of Chris’s heartbeat under his ear. That chest feels solid and warm. The whole morning feels solid and warm. It says: yes, go on, trust me. This is true.  
  
His head hurts, and his throat hurts. He probably ought to be alarmed about the closeness of the other body in his bed. He’s not. It’s Chris.  
  
…Chris. In his apartment. He’s all at once filled with alarm for a different reason. Chris, here, in his apartment; and he can’t remember half of what he said last night, he must’ve sounded terrible, panicked and falling apart on the phone and in Chris’s arms—oh, God, he’d practically thrown himself into Chris’s arms, Chris had never asked for that, Chris is his friend and came to help—  
  
He bolts upright, motivated by electric embarrassment. Chris lets out a sleepy dissatisfied rumble, and one hand stirs as if searching for him. Sebastian wants to reach over and reassure it. Instead he buries his face in his hands, immediately swears at himself in multiple languages because that is not helping the headache, and tries to come up with a plan.  
  
Chris is here, no changing that now, but surely Chris will get up and want to go, must have better things to do, places to be that are far more important than Sebastian’s ridiculous melodramatic after-the-fact breakdown. He’s _fine_ , after all. Not badly hurt, certainly healing, and in any case he’s well aware that there’s nothing to be done. All sunbeams and sleepy mornings, please continue. Everything normal in this particular bedroom. Nothing to see.  
  
Coffee is normal. Chris likes coffee. Sebastian doesn’t exactly _like_ coffee, but he does drink it in the mornings, bitter and hot and strong enough to wake him up for the day. He never adds sugar, because then he’d add _all_ the sugar, and that’s a dangerous road.  
  
What if Chris likes sugar in coffee? What if Chris likes cream? He’s got milk—well, possibly he’s got milk, it’s been a few weeks since he’s been home and it might’ve become a science experiment in his absence—but no cream, and maybe he can get up and run to the store before Chris wakes up, except he can’t get up because going to the store means going outside and that means _going outside_ and oh God he can’t even go find cream for Chris, how can he possibly deserve to be even Chris’s friend, how can he be selfish enough to still want more—  
  
“Hey,” someone’s saying. A hand on his back. A firm voice. Boston-accented, the texture that comes out with concern or amusement. “Hey. Breathe. I’m right here with you, I’ve got you, was it a nightmare? Can I help?”  
  
“I don’t think I have milk,” Sebastian says, “I think it’s become a new life-form in my refrigerator, I’m so sorry, _iartă-mă,”_ and then does start crying, because every word hurts like hell in at least two ways.   
  
Chris, impossibly, doesn’t lift the hand or lean away. Only keeps rubbing his back, slow large soothing circles. “Didn’t know you were experimenting with genesis in your fridge. Wonder if there’s scientific funding for that. Milk-based life-forms. Don’t talk. If you want milk I’ll run to the store, okay? Or, um, get groceries delivered, there’re places that do that now, there’s this thing called the internet, it’s amazing, maybe you’ve heard of it…”  
  
Sebastian pulls himself together enough for a fairly rude gesture. There’s no force behind it. Chris is here. Chris is here and holding him and talking about milk like this is ordinary, like maybe this can _be_ ordinary.   
  
When he blinks, his eyelashes stick together, damp. The morning’s cool and gilt-pale, light like serene antique portrait-frames capturing a scene.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says again, and tips his chin up with a finger, a gesture so intimate Sebastian feels it in his heart. “So…if I go make you tea—no, don’t use your voice, just nod, I mean I like your voice, I mean that’s why, I don’t want you to hurt yourself—fuck, did any of that make sense? I’m not good at this. Talking. I’m terrible at talking. Stay put while I make you tea.”  
  
Sebastian attempts opening his mouth.  
  
“Nope.”  
  
This time he glares. Makes writing motions with one hand.   
  
“Oh. Okay. Um…phone?”  
  
 _Thank you. Just give me a minute, it’s not that bad._  
  
“Ha. I heard you earlier. No.”  
  
 _Chris._  
  
“What?”  
  
 _You are good at this. Me. Being here._ After a second, brave before he can overthink it, brave because Chris will take it as a joke: _< 3_  
  
Chris laughs. Starts for the door; but he’s blushing, ears noticeably pink. When he’s almost out of the room, mutters, “You too.”  
  
Sebastian drops the phone. Pure shock. It bounces off a sheet-wrinkle, happily.  
  
Chris flees toward the kitchen. There’s a determined bustle of opening cupboards. The tin of tea, he recalls, is still on the counter.  
  
A stray beam of sunshine bounces through closed blinds. Lands merrily on the pillow beside him, the pillow that’s got the lingering indent of Chris’s head from the night.   
  
Sebastian, sitting alone in the middle of his bed, looking at his phone, finds his mouth tugging itself into a smile.  
  
Chris comes back with tea and a tentative smile. “I don’t know if you’re hungry…you don’t have a lot of food. Pretty much chocolate ice-cream and frozen pizza and your terrifying milk. I’m not sure any of that’s breakfast.”  
  
A sip of tea, a venture of words. Working now, if rusty. Good. “I haven’t been here for a month. There is nothing at all wrong with chocolate ice-cream for breakfast. And I was planning to—oh, _futu-ti ceapa ma-tii_ —!”  
  
“What? Are you all right? What’s wrong?”  
  
“No, nothing, I’m fine…” In fact he’s trying not to cough after inhaling extra-hot tea, but that’s a lesser worry at this particular instant. “I said, um…fuck your mother’s onions…sorry, not your literal mother, I’m sorry, it’s an actual saying…oh, damn, I need to call _my_ mother, where’s my phone—”  
  
“Here.” Chris hands it over. “Onions? Really? And why are we calling your mother?”  
  
“I said it was a saying. Traditional. Don’t mock my onions. I’m supposed to be there for dinner today; I told her I had time off…”  
  
“Teach me that one,” Chris says, “so I can use it. Are you…you aren’t thinking of…”  
  
“I…can’t go.” Sebastian pauses with fingertips on his phone. The sunbeam sneaks away to hide. It knows, too. He bites his lip. The pain’s his own, this time. Unlike the other wounds. “Obviously.”  
  
“What do you want to do?”  
  
He takes a deep breath. Chris’s eyes are unguarded and genuinely concerned; equally genuinely asking, letting any course of action be his choice. Sebastian wants to be surrounded by that gaze forever.  
  
He’s always—well, not _always_ , but certainly since meeting Chris Evans—thought of Chris’s eyes as the definition of _blue_. His own are too pale, too skittish of strangers; Chris’s eyes are just right, though. The shades of green and brown only serve to highlight all the brightness of the blue, hinting at complexities and enticements. The lure of a distant horizon, sea and sky and laughing adventure. Rocks and shoals might exist, but they’ll get out of the way eagerly when faced with all that boundless energetic charm.   
  
He wonders whether Chris would understand, if he looked up and said: I saw an ocean for the first time from an airplane window on the way to America. I was twelve and scared and the water looked back like every possibility in the world, opened up and endless and waiting for me, not easy but unlimited, and maybe then I was a little less scared, and when I think about oceans I think about your eyes.  
  
“I’ll tell her I’m sick,” he decides, and doesn’t miss the wince of comprehension that flits across those eyes at the necessity of the lie. But Chris nods, gaze steady, and settles in on the bed beside him as if there’s no place else in the world to be.  
  
His mother does believe him, mostly because he honestly sounds terrible, voice flayed to the bone. This, coupled with a sufficient amount of acting ability, prompts long-distance maternal fussing, offers of sour meatball soup, and finally inquiries about whether she should come over instead. Sebastian interjects hastily “No!” and _then_ has to deflect suspicious questions about why he doesn’t want his  mother and stepfather showing up to take care of him and whether he’s too busy for her.  
  
“You know I love you,” she says. “I want you to be healthy. Are you in bed? Keeping warm?”  
  
“I…ah…” He throws a desperate glance at Chris. Chris raises unhelpful eyebrows. “I’m all right, _mamă,_ I promise. I don’t want you to get sick. You have a concert next week.”  
  
“You think I wouldn’t miss it to take care of my only son? You, in that apartment, all alone, I know you need space but you could come home instead and I’ll make _pască_ even though it’s not a holiday—”  
  
“I’m _fine_. And I’m not alone. I’m…” Ah. Revenge for the way Chris is soundlessly adorably failing not to laugh. Perfect. “…I’m here with Chris. He’s taking care of me. He made me tea.”  
  
“Chris?”  
  
“Captain America, _mamă_. The one you said looked like a nice boy.” That’d been after the first movie premiere. His mother’s not terrifically subtle when trying to gauge his interest in potential partners. Sebastian had answered, completely truthful, yes, he is; and then changed the subject.  
  
“Hmm. Put him on the phone.”  
  
Sebastian snaps his head over to look at Chris, so fast the room spins. Chris’s eyes are saucers.  
  
“I’m not going to—”  
  
“He’s not really there, is he?”  
  
“Of course he is, I—”  
  
Chris holds out a hand. Sebastian blinks. Chris makes a little come-on gesture: it’s okay, go ahead, we can. Sebastian blinks again. Worlds colliding. Sunlight too bright. His head throbs.  
  
Chris sighs, wraps an arm around him, takes the phone out of his limp hand. Taps a button. “Speaker? …okay, um, hi, um, ma’am.” He pauses to mouth: _ma’am?_ Sebastian just shrugs, because between his mother and Chris and last night and this morning he’s decidedly overwhelmed by all the concern. Reactions overloaded. No energy left to process or protest the care.  
  
“He’s definitely sick,” Chris confirms, with an expression that proclaims _I think I’ve just lied to your mother oh God I’m so sorry_ , “but he’s okay. He’ll be fine.” Now the expression says _I know you will_. Sebastian has to blush. To glance away. At the corner of the pillowcase. The cheerful strip of sunlight on the carpet.  
  
“I _knew_ you were a nice boy.” She sounds delighted. “I told him so. You look like a nice boy, I said. And my Sebastian deserves a nice boy.”  
  
“ _M_ _amă!”_ Sebastian yelps, diving for the phone. And then instantly says something far more profane, because _oh God_ frantic interruptions hurt. His mother’s rolling her eyes, he knows. “I never taught you those words. What will he think of you, honestly, you want to scare him away? Chris, I’m apologizing on behalf of my son. _Fiu_ , apologize to the nice boy.”  
  
“It’s okay.” Chris is grinning. Sebastian summons up the energy to punch him—weakly—in the arm. “I’m not easily scared away, ma’am. And I happen to think he’s nice, too.”  
  
The sound on the other end can best be described as a beatific sigh. “All right, then, I will leave you two alone to be nice to each other. Chris, you make him rest, he won’t tell you when he needs to, so you keep an eye on him for me.”  
  
“I promise, ma’am.”  
  
“Sebastian, let Chris take care of you. Tell him thank you. Bring him over sometime, _el și_ _fundul lui_ _drăguț,_ and let me say hello.”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says. “Absolutely not. No. Ow. Never say that again, please, I’ll get you tickets to every single premiere I ever have if you promise not to say that to his face, I’m hanging up now, goodbye, _te iubesc,_ I love you, goodbye,” and tosses the phone at the bedside table, where by some miracle it lands safely.  
  
Chris cocks an eyebrow at him. Keeps the arm snugly around his shoulders. Sebastian shamelessly leans into it, because right now, for this moment, he can. “Do I want to know?”  
  
“She thinks you have a cute….backside. I’m so sorry. She…it was her and me. For so many years.” He bites his lip again. Trusts Chris with that much more. Because he thinks maybe he can. “Without her I wouldn’t be here. Well, biologically speaking, of course not, but…here. America. I would never have…had this life.” I would never have met you. I would never have known that my heart could do cartwheels in the presence of another person. I would never have seen your smile.  
  
“She loves you.” Chris shifts position, kneads Sebastian’s shoulders gently, making tension dissolve. “She sounds amazing. And, hey, I do have a pretty cute backside.”  
  
You do, Sebastian nearly says. No. Too far. Too presumptuous. With Chris’s hands already offering so much kindness. He wants it so badly, wants to feel secure and cherished and claimed under those hands.   
  
And he can’t. If he ever could have, it self-evidently won’t happen now. Not after Chris has seen him crumbling apart, broken and fucked by strangers in a run-down club’s men’s room. It wouldn’t’ve happened ever, Chris so vibrant and shining and golden, Sebastian the friend who brings him coffee sometimes and babbles uninvitedly about childhood telescopes on the phone.   
  
“She is. Amazing. And she’s right…thank you. For being here.”  
  
Chris sighs. Pokes him—carefully—in the ribs. “Stop that. Also, you said ow. How bad?”  
  
“Just the headache…since I woke up…I’m all right…don’t you have somewhere to be? Working?”  
  
“Are you trying to ask me to leave?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Are you trying to give me a reason to want to leave?”  
  
“No…”  
  
“Yes, you are.” Chris gets up. Comes around to the side of the bed, kneels down in the spot of sunlight, gathers Sebastian’s hands into his. “I don’t know why you think you need to give me an out. I don’t want it. I want to be here. Yeah, I should call Joss, and I’m gonna need to shower at some point, so I might need to borrow a pair of sweatpants or something, but I’m not going to leave. I’m going to bring you the painkillers Robert’s doctor left, and then I’m going to feed you chocolate ice-cream for breakfast and try to get groceries delivered because I’m not living off your frozen pizza, that’s not even real pizza, it’s depressing that you think that’s pizza, and then I’m holding you while you go back to sleep, okay?”  
  
Sebastian breathes. In and out. Feels the warmth of Chris’s hands, large and sweet, around his. Tea and sunshine and scampering wind. Feathery pillows and intent blue eyes.  
  
He nods. And then nods again, hastily, in case the first one was too belated. No words; but he can curl fingers around Chris’s in turn. So he does.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says. “We’re okay. If I ever want to leave, I’ll tell you. But I’m telling you I don’t. If I have to say something about fucking someone’s onions for you to believe me, I will, but it’ll have to be in English or really awful French, I’m warning you now.”  
  
And Sebastian, out of nowhere, dissolves into laughter. Unexpected. Just there. Welling up like tears from his heart. Like the sunshine.  
  
“I like your apartment,” Chris observes, still on his knees, fingers laced into Sebastian’s. “It feels like you. Did I see all of Carl Sagan’s _Cosmos_ on your shelves, because we’re so watching that.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, through the laughter, through the pain-limned joy. “Yes. _Da_. To everything. All of that. I—yes.”  
  
The morning passes in cups of tea and the drowsiness of painkillers and scientific exploration. In Chris’s arm around his shoulders and blankets on the couch. Chocolate creaminess, a soothing chill that feels marvelous on his bruised throat; when he mentions as much, Chris nods attentively and opens up the browser on his phone. A few hours later, when groceries arrive, there’s quite expensive chocolate gelato in one of the bags. Sebastian weighs it thoughtfully in his hand, and then goes looking for a specific paperback on his bookshelves.  
  
“…Heinlein?” Chris turns it over. “I don’t think I know this one.”  
  
“ _Red Planet._ With the original ending. For you.”  
  
“You want me to…you’re actually telling me to keep it?”   
  
“It’s not rare.” Sebastian catches himself worrying at his lower lip again. Stops. “It’s not even his best. I just thought…if you ever needed to…find Mars.”  
  
Chris’s fingertips rest, hushed, over the battered cover. “Thank you.”  
  
 _“Ma faci fericit,”_ Sebastian says, with his whole heart, and turns to go back to the groceries before he can embarrass himself any more.  
  
“Wait.” Chris looks at him, book in one hand, new and non-expired milk in the other, feet bare on Sebastian’s kitchen floor. “What was that?”  
  
“Oh…I said…I’m happy.” He is. Sore and bruised and recovering, and happy. And the light in Chris’s eyes makes the admission comprehensively worthwhile.  
  
Two days. A week. Chris doesn’t mention leaving. Sebastian’s afraid to say anything at all, to disturb the floating euphoric bubble they seem to be living in. Lazy mornings and nostalgic comedy-watching in bed, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray films, episodes of _Community_ because Sebastian’s a fan and Chris is willing to be introduced. Himself learning how to wake up with another body in his bed. Chris wandering around in a borrowed pair of stretchy yoga pants and no shirt, a sight which makes Sebastian nearly drop scrambled eggs all over his kitchen floor. Chris grins, though Sebastian can’t tell whether that’s amusement or amusement plus something more, and continues to not put on a shirt all day. Sebastian registers absolutely nothing that happens during season two of the show.  
  
Six days in, he gets the phone call follow-up from Robert’s doctor. Chris is in the shower; Sebastian answers. And, after hearing the verdict, sits down on the floor beside his bed because it seems like a good idea, and leans into the bulk of the furniture, and doesn’t exactly cry. Pure relief. Renewed shakiness all the way down.  
  
He hadn’t really let himself face the possibility of the other answer. Easier not to, while they didn’t have to know. And now they know. And he’s fine, all the lab work says he’s fine, and he says thank you and says he’s feeling better and hangs up and drops his face into his arms, trembling with freedom.  
  
The shower flips off. Wet feet on tile. The swish of a towel. Humming, a mostly on-key rendition of a Dropkick Murphys single. The humming pauses. “Sebastian? Was that—oh God, fuck, what happened, _are you all right?”_  
  
“I am.” He looks up. Chris’s hands are on his shoulders, damp and shower-hot and a fraction too tight. Chris is all but vibrating with protective fear, even as water trickles out of his hair and along his collarbone. Kneeling on the carpet beside him, wide-eyed.  
  
“I am all right,” Sebastian says again, “that was why he called, all the labs came back, I’m fine, I’m okay, I’m all right—” and Chris throws arms around him in exuberant celebration, there on the floor.  
  
Eight days. Ten. The bruises heal and the bandages come off and his voice returns, recognizably his at last. No scars. No mementoes. He decides not to go to the police; he can tell Chris disagrees from the heated kindling behind blue eyes, but Chris listens to his reasons, one by one. No way to find the men in any case. The looming specter of tabloid publicity. The fact that, unfortunately and unfairly but unavoidably, opinions will be influenced by the points of Sebastian having gone to a gay nightclub, consumed tequila, and danced with men. Chris tries to argue that one. “You know it’s true,” Sebastian says, and Chris subsides, unhappily, and goes off to start the dishwasher with far more vehemence than soap and plates require.  
  
He looks at himself in the mirror after the bandage stops being necessary, mostly out of curiosity. The face appears to be his face. His lips. His eyes look somewhat different, maybe, but not anything he can put a finger on. And it’s not so much what happened that night. It’s what happened after. He called Chris, and Chris came. The memory of hurt might be present, but that knowledge is present too.  
  
Chris doesn’t try to kiss him. Doesn’t try to touch him beyond supportive arms, hand-holding, cradled security in bed. Sebastian’s both relieved and dismayed. He’s also simultaneously surprised and unsurprised the first morning he awakens wholly aroused, cock hard and dripping against his stomach, Chris’s muscular heat present all along his back, every atom of his body instantly aware of all the places they’re touching. He all but has the orgasm from the thought alone. Chris Evans in his bed. Touching him.  
  
He slides out from under the sheets and bolts for the shower and barely gets his hand around himself before he’s coming so hard his knees give way. After, he slumps against the back wall of his shower, regaining breath under the concealing water, seeing stars.   
  
He wants Chris. He _can_ want Chris. One piece of his brain’s screaming that he’s just had the best orgasm of his life thinking about his best friend, with said best friend sleeping on the other side of the door. Another part is jumping up and down in victory.   
  
He’d been frightened, very deep inside, when he _hadn’t_ had any sort of physical reaction after the first two nights of Chris in his bed. Had wondered whether he’d ever be able to want anyone, especially another man, again. That one’s been definitively answered, at least.  
  
All the other pieces of his brain are busy collecting themselves from white-hot clouds of pleasure. No room for thought. Good _God_.  
  
Chris doesn’t seem interested in anything more than gentle platonic touches, though. Is, in fact, exquisitely scrupulous in that regard. Is a perfect loyal friend.  
  
Dismay. And relief. And resignation, in roughly that order. Sebastian gets used to them all. They’re overshadowed by the heartpiercing joy of opening his eyes to find Chris already awake and gazing back at him. If that’s as much as he can have, it’s more than he’s ever hoped to get, and he’ll take it with no regrets. Along with a few extra-cold showers.  
  
Joss Whedon calls the evening of day ten. Sebastian’s been starting to wonder. He suspects Robert’s told people to leave Chris alone. He’s a bit offended at the idea, but mostly kind of pathetically grateful.   
  
Chris hangs up and looks over at him. “I said I’d call back. I wanted to talk to you.”  
  
“Thank you…you can go. If you need to.” He adds, before Chris can say it, “I’m not trying to give you a reason. I’m…you know I’m happy. With you here. But it’s your career. What did he want?”  
  
“The publicity round’s starting…interviews…conventions…” Chris sighs. “He said I could have two more days. But I don’t want to leave you, if you’re not…if you want me to stay I will. Not just because you want me to, don’t take that the way it came out, I completely want to stay, so if you say yes I’ll tell him fuck the _Avengers_ , I’ve got another commitment.”  
  
“Don’t tell him that.” Commitment. To…him. Sebastian tests the idea out in his head. Chris is committed. To him. “I want you to stay. But—”  
  
“That’s that, then.”  
  
“I did say but. Pay attention.”  
  
“I am. You said stay.”  
  
“I did, but…” They’re sitting face to face on the sofa. The first _Fantastic Four_ movie’s playing in the background, because Sebastian’d spotted it on television and then hidden the remote. Chris had thrown a pillow at him, and started improvising all-new terrible dialogue over his own lines. At the moment Johnny Storm’s discovering flame-related superpowers on a ski slope. This is going about as expected.  
  
“…I also think you should go.” He holds out a hand despite the words; Chris takes it. “I don’t want you to give up your career for me. And you would be. If you walk away from this, from your film, from the biggest superhero film yet, people will remember. I won’t be the person who asks you for that.”  
  
“Are you saying that because you mean it, or because you think you should?”  
  
Chris knows him so well. Too well; and when did that happen? When did those walls become transparent? The night he called for help? The night Chris called him? The first moment they met, when Sebastian _knew_ with lightning clarity that his life would never be the same?  
  
He says, “Both,” because that’s fair. Chris’s eyes change, though Sebastian can’t quite read the emotion in the blue.   
  
“I’m all right—we both know I am, don’t look at me that way—and I should finally see my parents and I have to be back in Vancouver by the start of next month in any case.” He tries for a smile. “I promise not to visit any disreputable nightclubs. Home by midnight. No tequila.”  
  
Those eyes change again. Chris swallows. Inches closer to him over sofa-cushions. “Sebastian…about that…”  
  
“Tequila?”  
  
“No…about that night…” The grip on his hand is nervous. And the Boston accent’s growing stronger. Emotions running high under the surface. “You know…we never talked about…you told me what happened, but…you don’t…you know it wasn’t your fault, right? You don’t think you, I don’t know, how can I even say this out loud…it _wasn’t_ your fault. I _know_ it wasn’t. And I’ll tell you that, if you need me to, okay?”  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says, honestly startled. He’s not sure what he’d been expecting, but that’s certainly not it. “I know. I mean…yes and no. I said no. I fought back. I know they—they did that— _to_ me. I never said yes. I was stupid, though. Going out…on my own…dressed like—I know what I look like. I knew then. So, no, and yes.”  
  
“Fuck that,” Chris snaps, along with several other less polite words. “No. Just—fuckin’ no.”  
  
“But—”  
  
 _“No.”_  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian tries, off-balance over unfamiliar ground, creaking ice-floes that might split at any second, “I did…I can’t…I never told you…or maybe I did, I can’t remember…but no, I didn’t because then you’d know and you wouldn’t be here…”  
  
Chris’s expression’s painful to look at. Incandescent with fear and affection and fury. “There’s more?”  
  
Sebastian’s gaze slides back to the television. Then to the polished-wood floor, because Chris is on his television also, young and fiery and reckless. Heedless, as the idyll disintegrates at last. He did know it couldn’t last. He’s known all along. He’d told himself as much, that night, amid all the agony: he’s never known how to be the kind of person someone like Chris might ever really want.  
  
He says the words. Invites the cataclysm. “I danced with him. The one who—the first one. And I—they touched me. After. They wanted to see if they could make me—want them. If they played with me enough. And it felt good. That part. I didn’t—they didn’t let me get off, and it hurt too much to really—but it felt good.” He swallows past the renewed ache in his throat. Tries to pull his hand away. Chris won’t want it now.  
  
But strong fingers wrap around his even more fiercely. Don’t let him retreat. He stops trying to move, mostly out of surprise.  
  
“I know,” Chris says. “I’ve known the whole time. You did tell me. The first night. You said…you were crying, and you said I’d hate you if I knew, and I told you that was stupid, I’d never hate you, and I asked you to tell me, and I didn’t think you would but you did. You don’t remember that?”  
  
“It’s…very…sort of hazy…I did tell you.”  
  
“You did.”  
  
“And…”  
  
“And I stayed. And I’m telling you it’s not your fault. You dancing with them is not a yes. You in eyeliner and wearing that shirt—which I threw out, if you were wondering, it was in your bathroom that first night—that’s not a yes. You said no and you were hurt and you had a physical reaction when something in the middle of that fucking hell actually felt good and that’s not your fucking fault, clear?”  
  
“ _You_ threw out that shirt,” Sebastian echoes blankly, “I thought I did it without noticing somehow,” and then collapses into rather astonished tears.   
  
Chris holds him through it. Doesn’t talk much, despite affirming backrubs and caresses; when Sebastian manages to peek up, Chris’s eyes are wet as well. On the television screen, the Fantastic Four are preparing to take on Doctor Doom. Heroes. A team. Together. Conquering evil.  
  
Not terribly subtle of you, Sebastian thinks vaguely at his television. But yes. Message received. And thank you.   
  
The television looks as smug as electronics can. Chris’s arms are firm and all-encompassing. Sebastian breathes, into the shoulder that’s being support, “Thank you.”  
  
“I told you not to say it.”  
  
“For…throwing out my shirt, then. What I said…when I told you I was happy…”  
  
“I like you being happy.” Chris’s hand strokes through his hair. “Are you? Now?”  
  
“I didn’t translate it quite right. I said…you make me happy. I’m glad you’re here.”  
  
The hand pauses. Resumes. “Makes two of us.”  
  
“Two days,” Sebastian says. “Will you…can you tell me again? If I forget? Please. _Te rog_. Which means please. Sorry.”  
  
“You still think I should go?” Chris taps at his cheek, coaxes his gaze up. “I was thinking I’d stay.”  
  
“I think…you should go…and call me from the press tour. Whenever you have a minute. Or I can call you. Whichever you’d like. If you would. Like that.”  
  
“I would,” Chris says, “like that,” and leans forward, and Sebastian’s suddenly sure Chris is going to kiss him and he very much wants to be kissed but there’s an uneasy flicker of memory down in his gut, other uses of his mouth, lust appearing with no foreplay, and he’s turned on and scared and confused because Chris has never wanted—  
  
Chris tilts his head. Presses lips, soft and sweet, to the spot where there’s not even a scar, along Sebastian’s temple. “Is that okay?”  
  
Sebastian, breathless, whispers, “ _Da_.”  
  
Chris nods, and tucks him back into proprietary arms. They watch the end of the terrible movie and then the sequel when it comes on next, tangled up in each other in every conceivable way, and happy.


	6. your name through my piano keys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first kiss they've been waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had bits of this chapter done since the beginning. :-)

_one year ago: Sebastian_  
  
After the record-shattering opening weekend of _The Avengers_ , Sebastian watches all the interviews. Listens to Chris talk, that earnest enthusiastic guileless voice. Chris makes everyone comfortable, a steady kind flame beside his fellow co-stars; some of them crackle and sparkle and steal spotlights, albeit not in any purposeful way, but Chris, through all the media frenzy, remains dependable and unaffected. A sip of cool clean water between intoxicating multicolored liquor shots. A hand-lit fire, glowing in a hearth in reply to the bustle of rain.   
  
Chris talks about his dog and jokes about the weirdness of fame and gets caught on camera running over to hug a baby, a moment all the reporters and fans gush over. Sebastian smiles.  
  
They talk at least once every day. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for hours. Sometimes they’re both too busy for more than a quick good-night; some days, though, schedules aligned, they curl up in respective hotel beds and get Skype working properly on laptops. Chris waves. Sebastian blows a kiss at the camera. Chris mimes catching it, and they both blush.  
  
Chris asks how he is every single day, the first three weeks they’re apart. More than once a day, more often than not. Sebastian starts sending back random pictures: himself with tea and a _Scott Pilgrim_ DVD, a chocolate-syrup-drenched sundae, a view of the stars while on a night shoot in Vancouver. Chris sends a snapshot of his laptop screen displaying _The Covenant_ in reply to the first, a _so you’re happy then_ to the second, and a photo of himself with the copy of _Red Planet_ , sitting in a pre-interview make-up chair, to the third.  
  
Weeks and days and months pass. They don’t miss a day. Even if it’s only a text and a reply. And the fire never goes out. Excited leaping flames, every time.  
  
Chris gets a twitter account. Sebastian opts for instagram, mostly because he’s none too confident of his own ability to say anything coherent in a hundred and forty characters of English. Chris sends him a text that says _not fair, they all get to see you  :- (_. Sebastian, after a full ten minutes of starting and deleting replies, sends back, _I save the words for you._  
  
One specific night, knowing that Chris will be out, knowing the time, he picks up his phone, home alone in his apartment. “Hi,” he says, “happy birthday, I, ah, I wanted to say that, happy birthday, and I’m sort of sending you something, that’s all, goodbye,” and then he does send it, and then he realizes he’s forgotten to leave his name. But Chris will know. From his number. From his voice.  
  
He doesn’t call back. He does, very slowly, slide to the floor at the foot of his sofa, wrap both arms around his legs, and try to breathe. The sofa-leg props him up. He wants to tell it thank you, but he’s a bit busy having after-the-fact panic, so instead he just sits there and wonders what he’ll do if Chris doesn’t like the gift, or if Chris simply doesn’t _get_ it, or if Chris never answers at all, or if Chris decides this is too strange and they’re no longer friends. Or whatever they are. More. Other. Something.  
  
This might not be something that friends do. He knows. He just couldn’t not. Any more than he could’ve stopped his heart from beating.  
  
He leans his head back against the sofa-cushions. Listens to the beginnings of the rain, watery and silken and tentative along rooftops and eaves.   
  
Eventually, he gets himself off the floor and into bed. His sheets’re cold, unless that’s just his hands. Chris won’t call, not tonight. Chris has talk-show tapings and afterparties and won’t even listen to the message, probably. No reason to. They’ve already talked—he sent a party-hat-wearing yak photo earlier, and Chris replied with a voice message consisting only of himself laughing uproariously. Chris won’t be expecting more.  
  
He doesn’t think he’ll sleep but he does, drifting off to the unwavering silvery susurration of raindrops outside. The rhythm’s soothing, lulling, and he doesn’t remember closing his eyes.  
  
He flounders out from under blankets when the phone rings. “ _Pula mea_ —hello?”  
  
Chris’s laugh echoes vivid and cozy down the line. “How’d you know it was me? Besides the obvious.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You know how much I like you speaking other languages at me. What’d you say?”  
  
“Ah…” He sits there in bed, blankets pooling around his waist, trying to figure out a good direct translation for a fairly impressive profanity; the rain cheers wildly out in the night, and Chris’s voice sounds like impossible sunshine in the storm. Sebastian finds himself smiling. “I…ah…more or less…sort of…what the fuck…”  
  
“Really? Can you teach me that one?”  
  
“…but…a bit more…rude…it’s three in the morning. Are you all right? Is something wrong?”  
  
Chris is smiling as well; he can hear it. He clutches the phone as if it might escape, and listens.   
  
“No, I’m good, no worrying about me, I got done with the taping and we went to a bar and I didn’t get back to the hotel room until—I got your message. And I listened to it.”  
  
“…oh.” He wants to say more—I don’t mind worrying about you, I think I’d like to worry about you always, you’ve saved me more times than you know—but all his words in every language seem to’ve dried up and left him abandoned.  
  
“You…” Chris hesitates, uncharacteristically awkward mid-question. “Did you…write that? Compose it?”  
  
“ _Da_ —yes. I mean—it’s not—I know it’s not good, it’s been years since I—for all I know I accidentally stole a tune from a nineties television commercial—I just thought, I wrote it for you and you might want to—you can tell me it’s terrible, I won’t be upset, I’m sorry, never mind.” He wants to thump his head against the closest wall, or possibly crawl under the blankets and never come out again. Maybe no one will notice if he never comes out again.  
  
His mother will probably notice. Chris will probably notice. Might even come over and drag him out from under the blanket-fort. Maybe he _should_ go with the hiding option, in that case.  
  
He’d been terrified, not while playing but after, when he’d played back the hasty laptop recording. While he’d been sketching out the notes, testing them, he’d been lost in the swirl of melody, the voice of the piano, the curl and sway of musical phrases spelling Chris’s name with every beat. Sunlight and wholehearted kindness and big hands and broad-shouldered support, woven into spilling ripples from the keys.  
  
He’d made mistakes, the first time he’d turned on the laptop and tried to capture the sound: clumsy, too self-aware, too alert to all the years he’d gone without practice. The second time had been better. The third time had been the one he’d gone with, audio only, holding his breath and hitting send fast enough to not second-guess himself until the action was irrevocable.  
  
“I never knew you wrote music.” Very soft, as if trying not to spook a wild kitten; Chris would of course be kind to wild kittens, Sebastian thinks, and fights down a hysterical impulse to laugh.   
  
“I don’t. Not…really. Not for years. I’m keeping you up, go to bed—”  
  
“You wrote that for me,” Chris interrupts over his futile attempt to run away from the inevitable. “You just said. You—it’s beautiful, I should’ve opened with that, I mean, my God, it sounds like—like sunrise. I don’t know a lot about classical music, I’m sorry, I should learn, I’m probably not saying this right, there must be technical terms but—sunrise. Summer. Through a piano. I can’t even—thank you.”  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says again, foolishly inarticulate, and very nearly starts crying, which. No. “That—thank you. I’m glad you like it. I—it doesn’t sound right over the laptop speakers, and I had a problem in the second measure, too fast, I don’t know whether you can hear—”  
  
“Stop.” Chris sounds—annoyed? Impatient? Affectionately exasperated? Too hard to tell, through the connection and the rain. “Sebastian—don’t, okay? Not now. Not about this. I called at three in the morning instead of half an hour earlier because I was sitting here trying to figure out _how_ I deserved this. It’s beautiful, and I feel like some sort of uncultured idiot because I don’t even know how to start to thank you, so don’t you dare apologize to me for it, don’t tell me you’re not fucking _brilliant_ , because you _are_.”  
  
“I’m sorry—” He says it automatically. Stops. Swallows. “I mean—thank you. I wanted—I did like it. When I wrote it.”  
  
“I like it, too,” Chris says. “I love it. Are you in New York?”  
  
“…yes?”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“Tomorrow I’m going up to see my parents…my stepfather’s birthday, and he even has the day off, it’s a school holiday…I don’t mean because it’s his birthday, though it could be, he is the headmaster, it’s an actual holiday…” Why why _why_ is he telling Chris random facts about his stepfather’s teaching schedule? “And I’m due back in Vancouver the day after that. Aren’t you in California?”  
  
“Well, yeah, but I’m done, I could come by if…no, that won’t work, I have to be in Venice the day after tomorrow, film festival…” Chris sighs. “Damn.”  
  
“Oh…well, you called. And you like it. That means a lot.” It does.  
  
“Yeah…but…” Chris makes a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. Sebastian raises an eyebrow, though Chris can’t see. “Captain Frustrated Tiger?”  
  
“Oh, I like it, do I get claws?”  
  
“Very annoyed ones, yes. I’m not sure you’ll like the orange-and-black uniform. Don’t worry about making this work. I’ll be seeing you soon, in any case; I assume you also got the mysterious call from the Marvel person asking about clearing our schedules?”  
  
“Yesterday. Any ideas? And…if you hadn’t, I’d’ve called them back. I’m not doing a Captain America without you. Or a Captain Tiger.”  
  
Sebastian has to laugh. “I’d tell you to do it anyway. But yes. I…you know I’ve missed you. _Foarte_. Very much. I’m hoping for a Winter Soldier arc. All about Bucky Barnes. He deserves it. But no one’s told me anything; for all I know I’m only there to be your inspirational flashback scene. Not that I’d mind being your inspirational flashback scene, you understand.”  
  
Chris is quiet for a pair of heartbeats. Then, abruptly: “Okay, fuck this, I can’t not see you. I can’t—what’s the latest you can leave tomorrow?”  
  
“What—oh. I…can probably wait until mid-afternoon…film festival? Venice?” His mother might scold him for not showing up until dinner, but if there’s even a chance they can make this work, he’s not going to not try. _Chris_ wants to try. Wants to see him.  
  
“I have to change planes in New York anyway…hang on…okay, if I leave tonight I can have a six-hour layover tomorrow. La Guardia. I’ll go through security again, I don’t care, just tell me where to meet you.”   
  
“You would…you’d… _inima mea iti apartine._ Chris. Always.”  
  
“That’d better be a yes,” Chris says, “because I’ve just switched flights and I have to be at the airport in, like, twenty minutes. Call you when we land? Around eleven-thirty? Oh, fuck, I have to pack, where’s my good pair of jeans…”  
  
“They’re in your hotel closet, because you hang them up and then forget. It’s a yes.” It’s actually roughly _my heart belongs to you,_ but that’s more or less the same thing at this point.  
  
“It was kind of long for a yes. You _do_ know everything, how do you fucking do that, I love that you know everything. Oh God. Um.”  
  
Sebastian considers for not very long really. The rain tattoos elation on the windowpane. “I told you once that I listen. And I might…love knowing everything about you.”  
  
“…oh. You—oh.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
There’s another pause. Humming with unspoken exhilaration. Realization, and hope, and the noisy clamor of the storm.  
  
And then there’s what’s probably Chris glancing at the clock, swearing, and tripping over—if Sebastian’s any judge—his own suitcase. “Oh, fuck—I have to go, I seriously have to go, but I’m seeing you soon, okay, a few hours, and—and I’m seeing you. Right.”  
  
“You were right,” Sebastian says, “it was kind of long for a yes. I’ll tell you when I see you. But… _inima_ …heart. That one means heart. Go find your plane.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Chris says, very audibly sprinting through a hotel lobby on the other end.  
  
“I’m hanging up now,” Sebastian tells him, “so you won’t be late. Captain Tiger.” And then ends the call to the sound of Chris laughing helplessly in his ear.  
  
And then he throws himself out of bed, stares at his closet—what to wear, what to wear, it’s three-thirty in the morning and he’s seeing Chris in eight fleeting hours—and then ends up dancing around his bedroom in his boxers with a pair of jeans in one hand. He’s not even embarrassed. And he’s not afraid. His mirror-reflection’s dancing too, excited and nervous and laughing and in love.  
  
  
 _one year ago: Chris_  
  
His flight’s late. Naturally. The most important day of his life, the most important day ever, and he’s going to arrive an hour late for it.   
  
The plane circles. Interminable. Chris wants to scream at the uncaring clouds. The cotton-candy whiteness is mocking him. The rain below’s in cahoots. He loathes it.  
  
Sebastian will wait. Sebastian won’t give up on him. Sebastian will also probably be sensible enough to check arrival times and figure out that there’s a delay.  
  
Except Sebastian doesn’t know his flight number. And when it comes to feeling wanted, to feeling loved—  
  
Sebastian’s not entirely sensible. Chris loves him beyond any reckoning, complete heart and soul and body committed to the quest for that endless smile, but is aware that there’re some shadowy places, some unhealed bruises, that he’s not yet managed to soothe. He’s seen the surprise in exotic-turquoise eyes, every time it’s clear that someone _wants_ to speak to them.  
  
And now he’s late. And he promised to be there, moved his flight around to be there, and what if—  
  
No. It’ll work. He’ll make it work. He’s got five hours and he knows where Sebastian lives and if he has to he’ll run there from the airport. He’s not giving up now.   
  
The pilot gets on the intercom. An announcement. Landing. At last.  
  
He’s calling the second the wheels touch down on the slippery runway. No answer.   
  
He grabs his bag, stares at the people ahead of him in frustration—he can’t just push them out of the way, they don’t deserve to be trampled—and thinks of Sebastian teasing him, shyly wickedly flirtatious, and grits his teeth.  
  
The jetway’s cold. The air’s cold. New York is cold. Glimmering with mist, sleek metallic plane-bodies and blocky buildings wreathed in rain. Magical, perhaps. Anything might happen.  
  
Anything, like Sebastian having gone home alone, believing Chris isn’t coming.  
  
No. Not Sebastian. Not the person who’s stayed on the phone with him through anxiety attacks and post-interview decompression and laughter and terrible science-fiction jokes about the surface of the moon. Not the person who’d written such beauty into music and offered it up freely as a gift, for Chris to fall in love with all over again. Sebastian, loyalty once given, will always be there. Chris believes that. Knows that.  
  
But today he’s late. And he hates even the _thought_ of new pain behind wistful wanting pale blue eyes.  
  
He sprints down the jetway and out into the airport, heart thumping; and then he stops.  
  
He stops because Sebastian’s there.  
  
Sebastian’s there, at his gate, leaning lazily against a support pillar, all long legs and expectant-cheetah poise. Wearing a black jacket and matching boots and that wonderful curving smile.   
  
The smile gets even wider, the instant his gaze finds Chris’s face across the distance.  
  
“Oh my God,” Chris says, out loud and inadvertent, and runs.  
  
He’s breathless for all sorts of reasons when he skids to a stop in front of the smile. Sebastian’s eyes dance; Chris drops his bag on his left foot, kicks it away, and takes another step forward, hands reaching out all on their own. It could be awkward, could be strange. It’s not.   
  
Sebastian steps into his arms as if they’ve done this forever, holding each other in a bustling airport, holding each other the way they’ve done at night, the way they’re meant to be holding each other always.  
  
Sebastian’s an inch shorter than he is and slimmer but fits against him flawlessly, not fragile or hesitant at all. Warm and strong and solid and real. His other half.  
  
“You,” he says, dizzy with joy. The emotion feels a bit like an anxiety attack after all, except it’s pure shock and splendid love. “You—wait, I tried to call you—I thought—”  
  
“Mmm.” Sebastian’s arms slip around his waist, secure and smug. It’s a good look on him. Playful and cheekily pleased. Of course, everything’s a good look on him.   
  
Chris might be biased, but that one’s a fact regardless.   
  
“Yes. I was signing an autograph for the guard at the security checkpoint. She’s a _Once_ fan. I thought perhaps I shouldn’t annoy her by answering the phone. And I’d’ve called back but you were already here.”  
  
“How did you get here,” Chris breathes, hand running through Sebastian’s hair, stroking the nape of his neck, unable to stay still. Needing to feel all of him. “You’re amazing, how—”  
  
“I bought a refundable first-class ticket to Peru.” Sebastian tilts his head as Chris’s fingertips come to rest over his temple, palm cupping his cheek. “I am at entirely the wrong gate. Or the exact right one.”  
  
“…what’s in Peru?”  
  
“Machu Picchu. Chocolate. Coffee. This is starting to sound tempting. I could—”  
  
“Stop talking,” Chris says, and pulls him closer, hand settling possessively at the small of his back, which earns a smile. “Don’t go to Peru without me, I missed you so fuckin’ much, I love you.”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian whispers, “I love you, so much, _foarte, te iubesc_ , always—”  
  
And they’re leaning together, Sebastian’s lips parted; Chris has to kiss him, needs to kiss him, needs to find out right now how those lips feel under his—  
  
And he’s dimly aware that it’s been too long since they’ve seen each other, that the last time they saw each other Sebastian was hurt, that Sebastian might not want their first-ever kiss to be at a hectic airport gate surrounded by curious fellow passengers—  
  
Sebastian leans in that last millimeter, and kisses him. No hesitation at all.  
  
It’s a first kiss. It’s _the_ first kiss. No other contenders in the universe.  
  
Sebastian’s mouth tastes like black coffee and chapstick and lingering mist and joy, as luscious as Chris has imagined, except the imagining can’t compare to the real. Sebastian kisses like Chris is the only important piece of his world, devoting his whole attention to the presence of Chris’s lips under his, the most sensitive atoms of skin, the whimper Chris inadvertently lets out at a teasing flick of tongue.  
  
Sebastian smiles. Chris can feel it. He kisses back, a bit more forcefully. That smile’s his to kiss, now. And, if the way Sebastian shivers and goes pliant in his arms, opening up for further claiming and exploration, is any indication, the forcefulness is appreciated.   
  
Because he can, he curls his fingers into Sebastian’s hair, pulling him closer, and nips at that splendid lower lip. Sebastian gasps and arches greedy hips into his, pressing against him, evidently utterly shameless when turned on. Chris approves. Very much so.  
  
Somewhere in the background he registers the sound of applause. Fellow passengers, clapping. One or two of them wolf-whistle. Chris ignores them all—Sebastian’s started blushing but hasn’t stopped kissing back—and trails lips over the line of his jaw, his throat, the soft skin at the edge of his scarf. Sebastian lets out an exquisite sound of need, head tipped back against the excellent support pillar, one leg winding sneakily around Chris’s.  
  
There’s a rather embarrassed throat-clearing from behind him. A hand tapping him on the shoulder. Chris turns, reluctant and glaring. Sebastian’s leaning haphazardly on the pillar and looks thoroughly dazed with lust, and that’s just unfair, those enormous eyes all soft and hazy with desire, those lips wet and shining and newly-kissed; how can anyone expect him to stop now?  
  
The person tapping him on the shoulder turns out to be Sebastian’s security guard. She reluctantly points out that they probably ought not to have full-fledged sex in the airport terminal. This is unfortunately true.   
  
Chris sighs, apologizes for both of them because Sebastian apparently still can’t talk, takes a moment to be entirely proud of the fact that Sebastian still can’t talk and has carried on gazing at him with eyes full of blissful arousal, and then has to wonder whether they can find an unoccupied men’s room, because those eyes’re just unfair.  
  
The security guard leaves. A few of the more optimistic passengers continue to watch, in case the show begins anew. Sebastian blinks. Twice. _“Dumnezeule, iubi,_ _că_ _a fost_ _incredibil._ _”_  
  
“…that’s good, right?”  
  
“Oh, yes…very good…more?”  
  
“I think we’ll get thrown out of La Guardia. I’ve never been thrown out of an airport before. Overdue.” But he won’t, really; he does have another flight to catch, people he can’t let down on the other end. And Sebastian can’t go visit family looking like he’s just had the best sex of his life.  
  
That one might be a lost cause. He runs fingertips over the pink mark he’s just left on that elegant throat. His. Because Sebastian wants to be. The proprietary pride and amazement tangle in his heart and leave him airless and aching with love. “I love you.”  
  
“And I love you. I love you kissing me. Touching me, like that, there…” A shiver, breathing in; at the caress of Chris’s hand, that reaction. Incredible. Yes.   
  
Chris settles the hand at the back of his neck and leaves it there; Sebastian breathes out softly. “I like feeling you.”  
  
“I hope so.” Which earns a smile, incandescently bright. “So. Five hours…”  
  
“Four and a half, really. You have to board your flight on time. I’m not certain I can move. I’ve never been kissed like—I love you.”  
  
“I think I like that you forget English when I kiss you. What’d you say?”  
  
“I…don’t remember.” Sebastian laughs, soft and wondering. “I had dreams about this. Kissing you. More. I never thought…”  
  
“Are you—you’re not crying, oh, fuck, sorry, come here, was I that bad, I’m sorry, I can try again—” He’s mostly joking—best kiss of his life, _ever_ —but his heart twinges, tender and helpless. He strokes a thumb over Sebastian’s cheek, collecting tears. “Are you all right?”  
  
“I’m wonderful.” Sebastian shakes his head, laughs, flicks crystal drops away with a hand. “You’re wonderful. I’m trying to believe this.”  
  
“Believe it,” Chris says, and kisses him again, swift and almost chaste except for the tiny lick of tongue, nip of teeth. “I love you. I want you. Can I buy you overpriced airport coffee or something? First date?”  
  
“A first date…” Sebastian twines fingers into his. “Yes. I think you can.”  
  
They end up at a nondescript café, sandwiches and unimpressive coffee and busy tables. Sebastian regards his coffee sympathetically, and then puts half the contents of the sugar-tray into it. Chris watches in fascination. “You don’t do that at home.”  
  
“At home I’m trying to wake up. This…is about being happy. About what I want.”  
  
“And you want the entire sugar supply of the universe in coffee. And I love you.”  
  
“I want this,” Sebastian says, eyes very clear, “I want you. I love you. I may also love chocolate, you understand.”  
  
“I bought this for you,” Chris says, and pushes the tiramisu brownie that way. Sebastian considers this fact, breaks the brownie neatly in half, and licks sweetness from graceful fingertips after. Chris swallows. Sneaks the rest of his half over there too.   
  
Sebastian looks at it. And then says, very quietly, “What I said, on the phone… _inima mea iti apartine._ ”  
  
“You said you’d tell me.”  
  
“I did. I said…my heart belongs to you. It does.” With a glance at the last bite of brownie, and a flickering half-grin. “Not only because of that.”  
  
“You bought a ticket to Peru for me,” Chris says, and reaches over and takes his hand, heedless of chocolate. “You’re here. You’re always here for me. You always have been. And I’ll be here for you. Always. Um. In four hours I have to go to Venice. But I’m here.”  
  
“I know,” Sebastian whispers. “I know.”   
  
“And right now I want to kiss you again.”  
  
Sebastian’s eyes light up. Radiance in the aquamarine depths. “Yes, please.” And then, laughing, “Chris?”  
  
“I’m trying to kiss you. What?”  
  
“I might have to revise your present…new melodies…a new movement, for this…but I was going to say…a day late, but I can say it in person…happy birthday.”  
  
“…new movements,” Chris says musingly, and Sebastian starts wordlessly laughing, so bright and sweet that heads turn their way. Their feet collide and tap together, under the table. “And it’s a fuckin’ awesome birthday. Best ever. I get to have you.”


	7. beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the sex. No, seriously. ALL the sex. And also some emotions, in the wake of it.

_six months ago: Chris_  
  
“So,” Chris says. He feels himself blushing, as they slide into the hotel-bar booth across from fellow cast-mates. Awkward. Clumsy, again. But it’s been so long. Too long. He’s sure of this, never been more sure of anything in his life, but. Clumsy.  
  
“So,” Sebastian echoes, eyes dancing. And then leans in toward him, not an overstated gesture but blindingly obvious, and Chris figures out all at once that he’s been an idiot for _ages_ , because Sebastian’s been leaning into his warmth all along, as much of a gesture as those pale turquoise eyes ever felt comfortable making, and Chris should’ve just kissed him the first day they’d met and been kissing him since.  
  
He wraps an arm around elegant shoulders. Sebastian doesn’t even flinch, the way he might’ve once. Only settles in against him, exotic wary wildcat tucking in paws and finding a home. Chris kisses his eyebrow; Sebastian smiles. And nothing’s awkward at all.  
  
Across the booth, Anthony Mackie sighs, “Guys, get a room.”  
  
Sam Jackson retorts, “Hey, if you boys want to be out and proud, you should go ahead. First LGBT Captain America, right here.”  
  
“Yeah,” Anthony says, “but it’s the _first day_ , is all I’m sayin’. I wasn’t expecting sex on the restaurant tables for another week.”  
  
Sebastian’s eyes’re sparkling, though he doesn’t join in. Chris squeezes his shoulders more tightly. He can talk for them both. At least, he can talk for them both until Sebastian feels enough like part of the group to sneak up on everyone with wide-eyed seemingly innocent innuendo.  
  
“Too late,” he says, “we got here yesterday, and hey, man, you didn’t lock your dressing room, on set.”  
  
The look on Anthony’s face is wholly priceless. Sam applauds. Sebastian’s laughing into Chris’s shoulder. Scarlett just announces, “You have sex in my favorite chair and you die, Evans,” with a deadpan worthy of Black Widow, and gets them all a round of drinks.  
  
In the Hollywood night, the bar glows with welcome. Wood panels and shining glasses and camaraderie. Even the booth wants to fling arms around them. It’s a historic hotel, updated but possessing old bones, and it’s been catering to actors for decades. Marvel’s happy to put them up here for the weeks before they head off on location; the hotel’s equally happy to have them, and shows it in candlelight gleam.  
  
Chris pauses to contemplate Sebastian’s skin in the light. Extra gold, traced by coziness; in motion as he takes a drink, sets the martini down, swallows. Chris watches his throat move.  
  
It’s not in fact true that they’ve been here since yesterday. Chris has. Sebastian got in this morning, courtesy of delayed flights and unseasonable storms, and ran into the first production meeting ten minutes late and apologizing in three languages. He’d literally sprinted the last two miles, having abandoned studio-sent car and driver in a traffic jam. The driver’d called from the road, and everyone understood; Sebastian’d nevertheless fallen into the last chair with enormous unhappy eyes and stayed very unobtrusive for the rest of the meeting, speaking when asked direct questions, smile absent.  
  
Chris had wanted to hold him. Had tried to, with glances down the table. He thought it’d helped, maybe, a little. A little more after they’d broken for lunch, first table read commencing after, and he’d been able to put both hands on those shoulders—more developed than he recalled; Sebastian’d been working out, and oh that sensation went straight to Chris’s gut and stayed there—and try to knead some of the tension away.  
  
Someone’d reshuffled the seating arrangements when they’d come back in. Put Sebastian next to him, and coincidentally also next to one of the producers. They’d both looked at the table, and Chris had held that shaken hand beneath polished wood for the next two hours while Sebastian performed small miracles of acting beside him, both in-character as Bucky Barnes and as himself, not flinching when the large man’s thigh spilled into his space.  
  
The Russo brothers had come up to them after. Had looked them up and down—Chris still holding Sebastian’s hand—and sighed. “You two couldn’t’ve waited?”  
  
“No.” Flat. Undeniable. True.  
  
Sebastian had also said the no, much more softly but real. Chris had squeezed his hand for that.  
  
The pictures were out there. On the internet. On tabloid websites. Them at the airport. Them kissing, frantically, passionately. Them sitting at a café, sharing dessert. Private moments on display.  
  
No one’d got any video, and most of the photos were fairly blurry, courtesy of an overly excited crowd. Chris’s publicist had suggested they could deny it all. Chris had said, on the phone, “are you crazy, he’s the best thing that ever happened to me, no!” and she’d told him he was his own worst enemy and hung up. He’d immediately called Sebastian. Who’d gone extra quiet, and then asked whether Chris had ever heard the rumors about him, about anonymous gay hookups and delirious drugs and wild club scenes. Not true. Or ninety percent not true. Sebastian admitted that last with a dreadful quiver in the accent, melodic lilt fractured and slipping. Chris had said, instantly: I don’t care.  
  
He’d meant it. Always would.  
  
Some things were important. That was that.  
  
So we’re doing this, Sebastian’d said. Voice forlorn, over the distance between Venice and New York. Lost harmonies in the storms. We’re doing this now.  
  
Chris had answered, if you want to. And had hoped with all his heart that the answer’d be a yes. In any language.  
  
He could wait, if Sebastian asked for that. He would wait. He’d keep the secret, if that was what Sebastian needed to feel safe. And he’d never resent it.  
  
There’d been a silence. One heartbeat. Two. And Sebastian had said: we’re doing this, then. Now.  
  
They’d never made a formal statement. No one’s business but theirs. They’d simply not bothered issuing a denial. And, astoundingly, it hadn’t properly mattered. The photos’d hovered, then faded from public view. Some internet support; some angry mocking. Not enough to make a dent. And phone calls from Marvel, assuring them of their contracts, no matter what.  
  
That one _had_ mattered. Chris, caught up in the initial euphoria—he’d gotten to kiss Sebastian, and he didn’t give a damn who knew—had sobered abruptly. He himself might not mind moving behind the camera at some future point—as a director, a producer—but Sebastian hadn’t had, not yet, quite the same career. Might be only now comprehending the implications, the same way Chris himself was.  
  
But Marvel was behind them. And signed Sebastian to a staggering number of commitments, more than Chris’s own. Chris wasn’t sure what that meant, but Sebastian’d called him and left a voicemail entirely not in English, suggesting an impressive level of shock.  
  
Sebastian had called back. Chris had answered. And they’d had the best sex of Chris’s life, though he’s well aware that an attempt at phone sex that’d barely got through kisses should theoretically rank nowhere near that high.  
  
Sebastian’s voice. Just that good. He’s not ashamed.  
  
The Russos’d rolled eyes at them, ordered them to keep it professional on set, and left. Sebastian had looked up at Chris—not far up, only that inch between them, and yet it mattered somehow, left Chris feeling hot and cold and out of control with the need to push those water-pale eyes up against the nearest wall—and smiled.  
  
Anthony’d bounced by and summoned them to the bar. They’d gone, because that was what good cast-mates did. Being professional.  
  
And now they’re here. Himself with an arm over Sebastian’s shoulders, the candlelight bathing golden skin as Sebastian finishes off the defenseless martini, Sam Jackson applauding the technique.  
  
Sebastian’s marginally relaxed enough, or tipsy enough, to say “thank you” to the compliment. Chris skims a hand through his hair, longer now, enough to curl around fingers and tug. “You’re beautiful.”  
  
“Oh, hell,” Anthony says, “now they’re gonna be romantic,” and conjures another round. The Marvel family, getting along.  
  
Chris sticks to beer, not intending to get drunk. Not with the sensation of Sebastian’s hair slipping over his fingers, the heat of flushed skin under his hand at the nape of Sebastian’s neck. He can’t stop touching. He suspects he’ll never be able to stop touching.  
  
Sebastian’s martini choice this evening is something decadent and indulgent, chocolate liquor and wintry vodka and blackcurrant sweetness. When Chris kisses him, those beckoning lips taste like dark fruit and cool snow and iced cocoa, quixotic and dreamy. And Sebastian melts into his arms, reserve left behind in favor of pure unabashed desire.  
  
Right. Upstairs. Now. Abruptly there’s nothing more important in the world. His entire body’s singing with arousal, electric and flavored with Sebastian’s mouth. Months of denial, months of phone sex, the memory of that single sizzling airport kiss to get them through, wonderful and dreadful because his nerve endings all know what they’re missing—  
  
Sebastian makes a soft little needy sound, gazing at him, lips wet. Chris, without even pausing to think, wraps a hand around his wrist. Squeezes. “My room?”  
  
And Sebastian nods, voiceless, eyes shining.  
  
They slip out of the booth and run to the elevator, hand in hand, laughing like truant children. Anthony glances up in time to wave them off, and then appropriates the last abandoned sip of Sebastian’s martini, smirking. Chris waves back. The whole world’s weightless. Effervescent.  
  
Up twelve floors, tangled together in the elevator, hands untucking shirts and tugging at belt buckles; two doors down, Chris’s room, a fumbled wave of door key, and they end up inside, tripping over each other as they fall toward the bed. Chris tries to land on the bottom so as not to crush Sebastian under his weight. Sebastian is apparently flexible enough to flip them both around last minute and get Chris to come down atop him anyway.  
  
“Sorry!”  
  
“No, I like feeling you…” One long leg wraps around Chris’s hips. “I’ve been wanting to feel you. I’ve been wanting you…” Sea-spray eyes sparkle, blushing but steady. “Forever.”  
  
“Me too,” Chris whispers, feeling the words through his body, through Sebastian’s where they’re lying pressed together, and kisses him again, pouring conviction into the kiss with all his heart.  
  
He sits up enough to yank off his shirt. Sebastian sits up as well, and loses his own softly clinging t-shirt in a shimmy of motion. Chris stops to gaze, openly admiring. Long legs, long waist; coltish grace, but powerful. Sebastian _has_ been working out. Chris wants to lick every one of those neatly defined muscles.  
  
Sebastian nudges him with a foot. “Pants.”  
  
“Yours, or mine?”  
  
“Both!”  
  
“Oh, okay, impatient, I see who’s in charge…” He wrestles his jeans down, gets stuck at his ankles because he’s forgotten about his shoes, and finally surfaces from recalcitrant clothing. And finds Sebastian regarding him with an unidentifiable expression, fingers hovering over the zipper of tight jeans.  
  
“What,” Chris says, standing there in boxers and nothing else, all at once remembering, “is something—do you not want to, is this too fast, am I—”  
  
“No! No, I want you, I swear.” Sebastian fiddles with the zipper. Eases it down—and his arousal’s obvious, pressing upward in relief—but doesn’t move to dispose of the jeans. “I only…Chris, have you ever…you know I’ve…with other people, men, I mean…have you…”  
  
“Oh God,” Chris says, “are you trying to ask if I’m a gay sex virgin?”  
  
“…are you?”  
  
“Um.” There has to be an answer that won’t derail the moment. Somewhere. “I…was fifteen and curious, and—”  
  
“Oh, _mama dracului_ , you _are_.”  
  
“I am not! There were…hands. And things. Mostly hands. I know I want to! I love you!”  
  
“No, I know, I know you do…” Sebastian hesitates, lower lip caught between teeth. “Does it…bother you? That I’ve—what I’ve done?”  
  
Chris sinks down on the bed beside him. Reaches out, sets his hand atop the pensive one, rubs his thumb over the back of that wrist. “No.”  
  
“…no? Just—no?”  
  
“Well,” Chris points out, truthfully, “it’ll help if one of us knows what we’re doing,” and Sebastian’s smile resurfaces, bright as coruscating stars. “I can handle that.”  
  
“I like the idea of you handling that.”  
  
“I like the idea of handling you. Stand up, please.”  
  
“So you _are_ in charge.”  
  
“One of us has to be.” Sebastian slides off the bed, all fluid rippling motion. “But I’m asking you to fuck me.”  
  
Chris, despite standing firmly on both feet as directed, nearly falls over.  
  
Sebastian grins. Drops to his knees, hooks thumbs into the waistband of Chris’s boxers, whips them down. Licks those lips. Eagerly.  
  
“Oh God,” Chris says, looking down. Sebastian’s looking up, and those pale eyes glint with anticipation and merriment and satisfaction. Chris’s cock jumps, inches from that mouth and desperate.  
  
“ _Te iubesc,_ ” Sebastian murmurs, and leans forward. And takes him in, slow and sweet and unstopping, heat and skillful lips and talented tongue caressing every inch.  
  
Chris groans. Helpless. Seeing stars.  
  
Sebastian smiles, glancing up through lowered eyelashes with Chris’s cock in his mouth.  
  
Chris gasps, wobbles on his feet, feels the escaping jolt of the beginnings of orgasm, and digs fingernails into his own palms. Control. Dear God, please, control.  
  
Sebastian swipes that tongue across his tip, licking up every bit of the spill, sucking, stroking, hand curling loosely around his base. The other hand teases his balls, where they’re drawn up tight and aching for release. Lower, pressing gently behind them. Chris whimpers. Would pray for self-restraint, if he had any words.  
  
He does find one. Maybe two. “You…oh God…so good, fuck, _fuck_ —no, wait, you—you said you wanted—”  
  
Sebastian’s mouth slips from his cock with an obscene pop. Pleased lips, sticky and intoxicating, curve into a smile. “I do. Do you have something?”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“Lube, _iubi_. As adorable as it is to watch _you_ forget words this time.”  
  
“Was…that…love? That you called me. And. Um. Actually—” He does. He’d bought it, thinking, maybe. Maybe.  
  
“It was. Do you mind?”  
  
“No. I, um, suitcase, hang on—” He runs. Probably looks ridiculous, naked and aroused and sprinting around his hotel room; but Sebastian’s watching with unequivocally lustful appreciation, so he’s not going to worry about it.  
  
He dives back onto the bed. Sebastian’s hopped back up there as well, jeans still undone but not off; Chris pauses. “Are you—”  
  
“I want you to.”  
  
“Oh. _Oh_.” He’s never undressed another man, not like this—manhandling drunk friends out of rental tuxedos at weddings doesn’t count—but, looking down at Sebastian, who’s lying like a decadent courtesan amid crisp white sheets and feathery pillows, he feels the flutter of need deep in his stomach.  
  
He slips hands under denim, carefully. Sebastian raises an eyebrow at him. “Everything, if you please.”  
  
Oh. Underwear, too. Hip-hugging designer briefs, apparently. Sebastian likes luxurious fabrics and stylish tailoring, so that shouldn’t be a surprise, but kind of is, because despite the scattered nights of phone sex Chris has never gotten a good look and has also never contemplated other men’s undergarment choices.  
  
Maybe he should’ve dressed up more. He’d just been wearing standard boxers. Navy blue. Maybe Sebastian’s wondering why Chris doesn’t care and didn’t dress up for him and—  
  
“What _are_ you thinking about?”  
  
“Um. Nothing.”  
  
“Nothing has you looking very serious, _iubi_.”  
  
“You love me.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“And…I love you. You know that, right? I mean…I’m sorry I didn’t think about my underwear.”  
  
Sebastian stares at him for a minute, opens that mouth, closes it, opens it again, shakes his head. “I’m not even going to try to guess. Yes, I love you. The only opinion I have involving your undergarments involves them being on the floor. You may, however, ask me to wear the ones with black lace on occasion—”  
  
“What?”  
  
“—but right now I would quite like _that_ inside me, if you wouldn’t mind.”  
  
“Lace?”  
  
Sebastian stops talking. Shuts his eyes. “Pretend you didn’t hear that. I may be slightly intoxicated.”  
  
“I want to know more about your black lace.” Later, though. He leans in for one more kiss. “How intoxicated, exactly?”  
  
“Oh. Not very, in fact; that was only two drinks. I wanted an excuse. I’m entirely sober enough to know what we’re doing. And weren’t you? Doing something?”  
  
“You secretly aren’t shy and sweet at all, are you…” He gets hands around clothing. Tugs. Sebastian obligingly lifts hips. And then is naked, a profusion of golden skin and long legs and taut muscle. And desire.  
  
Chris stares. Swallows. Swallows again.  
  
He’s not got a lot of grounds for comparison, but he’s pretty sure Sebastian’s beautiful _everywhere_.  
  
“Ah…” More lip-nibbling. This, Chris has figured out, is a delaying tactic. When words don’t want to emerge. When those words are difficult, or painful. “Am I…is this…tell me now if you don’t want me, because—”  
  
“Are you _insane,_ ” Chris says, and dives in for another kiss. He drags a hand over the closest thigh, too, and catches the resultant gasp; so he wraps his hand around Sebastian’s cock, because, well, he really, really wants to.  
  
Sebastian’s hips snap upwards, pushing into his hand. “ _Da_ —”  
  
“Oh, like that? Or more like this?” He experiments. Different angles, speeds, movements. He knows what he likes; he’s a fast learner, always has been, and he memorizes all the specific motions and strokes and grips that earn broken moans and cries and pants, until Sebastian’s writhing on the bed under him, shivering and incoherent and sobbing his name.  
  
Chris takes a deep breath, bends down, and licks the tip of that flushed head. Sebastian moans, sounding gorgeously abandoned to want.  
  
He does it again, with more resolution. There’s a lot of frantic swearing in Romanian, and then, “Stop—wait—no, stop, unless you want me to—”  
  
“Really?” Someday he’ll be good enough to reciprocate the brilliance of Sebastian’s mouth, but not yet, so he just leaves kisses trailed across parted thighs. Sebastian’s cock is wet with need, leaking arousal already; he can taste it on his tongue. Not like anything else, ever. Not bad.  
  
He murmurs, “I could practice more,” and Sebastian whimpers, legs falling further apart. “Chris—please.”  
  
“I thought you were in charge.”  
  
“I’d rather _you_ be—”  
  
“You would?”  
  
“I don’t know, will you just fuck me, please, _la naiba, să-mi fut,_ please—”  
  
“You did say it. I think I like you like this, telling me everything…” He rubs his hand along the length of Sebastian’s cock, just once. Sebastian shivers, lips shaping one more _please,_ pleading.  
  
Chris isn’t entirely sure where all the words’re coming from, but they seem to be there, and the reaction’s indisputably wonderful. He ventures, “I like hearing you say please,” and Sebastian gasps, cock jumping under his hand, more tiny throbs of need. “Yes—”  
  
Yes, then. All right. He grabs the lube. Then faces the nagging detail of never having done _this_ before at all. “Um.”  
  
“Oh…” Sebastian blinks up at him, eyes hazy with desire. “Yes…I can, if you want…”  
  
Wordless at the thought, Chris proffers lube. Sebastian sighs, slips fingers between his thighs and further back, caresses tight pink muscle. Chris is absolutely certain the room’s gotten too hot. No air left in his lungs. All the blood in his body headed to one spot, as he watches Sebastian tease himself open, fingers slick and practiced.  
  
He can’t just watch. He can’t. “Can I…help?”  
  
This earns the best smile yet, sunshine straight to his heart, where it stays. “ _Da_. Fingers, please. Two.”  
  
“Here?”  
  
“Yes…oh…a bit more…oh, there, _that_ —”  
  
 _That_ evidently leaves Sebastian inarticulate and quivering, mouth suspended mid-sentence, whole body arching into the touch. Chris enjoys this result. Enjoys doing that again. Sebastian very nearly screams.  
  
“You—you—please, you did say you like—me begging, _iubi,_ please—”  
  
“I do,” Chris whispers, amazed and elated, thrilled to the core, “I think I do, yeah, okay, so—you want me to fuck you, ask me again—”  
  
Sebastian whimpers. Tries to push his hips deeper onto Chris’s hand. Chris, who’s definitely getting the hang of this, of Sebastian, pulls fingers back, tantalizing, teasing. Sebastian stares at him, wild-eyed, flushed and falling apart. “Please fuck me. Chris, _please_.”  
  
He can’t help it. Has to claim that luscious mouth in one more kiss, and breathe into it, “Yes.”  
  
And then he slips the fingers out—messy with lube, but who cares, they can get spare sheets, the world’s incredible and Sebastian’s incredible and sex with Sebastian’s incredible—and kneels between spread thighs, those long legs on display like a willingly offered gift. And he lines them up, and eases forward.  
  
Sebastian lets out a small sound, as he first pushes in. Chris stops. “Are you—”  
  
“Fine— _da_ —yes, go on, I’m—you’re very—words—large, that’s all—oh…”  
  
“God,” Chris says, balancing on elbows, brushing hair out of Sebastian’s eyes, “I love you so much.”  
  
Sebastian smiles. Turns that head enough to kiss his wrist. “I love you. Now move. Please.”  
  
“If you’re asking,” Chris says, and does.  
  
He tries to be considerate and gentle at first—large, Sebastian’d said, and he knows he’s strong, and he’s just not sure—but Sebastian starts swearing at him in Romanian and then swings a leg over his hips and pulls them together harder. Chris gets the message. Sebastian can handle this. More forcefulness, then. Finding that spot again. Hearing the breathless little scream.  
  
And they move together, hips rocking into each other, slick skin and pants and dizzying ecstasy; a pillow flies off the bed, and Chris laughs, and Sebastian laughs back, exhilarated and euphoric, and wraps hands around his shoulders, holding on. Chris finds a rhythm, keeps it up, himself pounding into that place deep inside, over and over; he’s so close, about to come, but he won’t, not until he can get Sebastian to—  
  
Sebastian goes rigid under him, eyes huge, lips parted, whole body shuddering; Chris thinks of something else with the last ounce of his sanity, and gets a hand between them, heavy and hot around Sebastian’s cock, and he feels Sebastian come, feels it everywhere, that body tightening around him, pulses of orgasm splashing out across his hand.  
  
That feeling, and the sight of those rapturous eyes, pushes him over too. He comes without even moving, long quivering waves of mindless bliss. Himself, inside Sebastian.  
  
After a while he remembers how to think, and breathe, and move. Sebastian’s lying exhaustedly beneath him, chest going up and down, leg still looped around his waist. Chris nuzzles a kiss into his throat, joyful and tired and sloppy. “Love?”  
  
“ _Da…secundă, te rog, iubi…_ ”  
  
“Okay, try it in French and I might get a few words. Was that…that was…good, right?”  
  
Sebastian grins. “Very yes. I said…one second, please, love…I feel wonderful. You are wonderful. Yes.”  
  
“You’re beautiful. And yes. But…I should, um…” He can feel himself, when he shifts position. Slippery. Softening. Shockingly intimate. Good. “…clean up?”  
  
A nod, so he withdraws—  
  
And then freezes at the tiny hiss of air through teeth. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“That’s not very convincing.” His heart’s threatening to leap out of his chest. The room’s gotten colder, no longer safe. “Talk to me. Please.”  
  
“I’m fine.” Sebastian wriggles under him, catlike and content. “Sore. A bit. It’s been…a long time. And you _are_ large. I like it.”  
  
“Sore?” He finds water. Tissues. Cleans them both up as best he can, as tender as possible with Sebastian, who shivers at the first touch of warm water but relaxes into the ministrations. Chris does know enough to check, and nothing looks hurt, no heartstopping hints of red-hued injury; and he trusts those pale eyes to speak up if they’re in pain. But there’s only loose stretched pinkness, well-fucked and satisfied, as Sebastian sighs and stretches, limbs taking up nine-tenths of the king-sized bed.  
  
“Hmm,” Chris says, and tosses the tissues to one side, and sits beside him, running a hand over the planes of his back, learning every dip and valley. “Still awake? You can sleep. If you want.” He’s tired too, but in a kind of radiant floating exuberant way, like he could leap tall buildings in a single bound or go dancing under the stars. Sex with Sebastian. It’s magical.  
  
Sebastian rolls over. Waves a drowsily imperious hand at him. “Come here. Hold me. Please.”  
  
“I love you.”  
  
“Love you. Always.”  
  
“Always,” Chris agrees, and takes his hand, turns it over, kisses his palm, his wrist, the soft skin on the inside of his forearm. “Forever.”  
  
Across the room, there’s a crack in the curtains, where he’d not completely pulled them shut. Through it, star-witnesses twinkle in glee.

 

 _six months ago: Sebastian_  
  
“I get nervous on planes,” Sebastian says, lying sprawled across the sheets, muscles turned to languid water. He’s watching Chris’s body, the bend and flex of muscles, fair skin and the fluid ink of tattoos, five that he can see, that he’s now tasted with lips and tongue and fingertips. He wants to ask about them, about the Taurus zodiac symbol on one arm—Chris isn’t a Taurus—and about the sleek swooping kanji on the other, and the name memorialized over ribs, obviously someone who mattered very much and always will; now’s not the right time, but there will be a time, there will be time, for all those stories. He believes so.  
  
Chris has been stroking a large hand over him, thigh to hip to waist, as if attempting to memorize every atom of skin; the hand stops as the words sink in. Sebastian’s unsure whether that’s startlement, comprehension, or both.  
  
He adds sleepily, as the petting resumes, Chris’s fingers apologizing for the interruption, “Not, oh, a phobia as such. I’m not afraid of flying. I only might crush your hand during take-off and landing…it’s just a moment or two…what?”  
  
Chris leans down to press a kiss into his stomach, just below his navel. Then stays put, looking up, happy and intimate. “You said I’d be holding your hand.”  
  
“Oh…well…wouldn’t you?” He’s aiming for playful, lighthearted, self-mocking. Instead he hears the plaintiveness. Cringes internally. “Not that you have to. _Nu trebuie să._ Of course not.”  
  
Chris’s eyebrows tug together. Not quite a frown. “You know I will. Whenever you want. Because I want to. I know you’ve gotten on planes without me. I know you can. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to let you crush my fingers whenever I get the chance, got it?”  
  
Such conviction. Such certainty, in that faded-Boston accent. Bedrock and history. Promises like tree-roots sunk down deep and holding on.  
  
The way that maybe he can hold Chris’s hand, and Chris can hold his. Whenever they get the chance.  
  
“ _Da_.”  
  
“Okay, then.”  
  
“Chris…you should know…there are things you should know. About me.”  
  
“I do know you.” Chris kisses his hip this time. The scratch of stubble, growing in—Chris will need to shave soon—feels like confidence. Marked and drawn and sketched over naked skin. “I know who you are. And I love you. If you want to tell me, I want to know—I mean, I’ve always wanted to fuckin’ know, everything about you, everything—but only when you’re ready. I can wait, ’kay?”  
  
Sebastian bites his lip. Very hard. Not going to cry. Not even from floodwater hopeful joy.  
  
“Hey,” Chris says, and kisses him again, nudges a nose into his hip, affectionate breaths. “I’m gonna start to worry if you cry every time I kiss you, y’know?”  
  
“I’m not…not because of that…I like you kissing me.” He can reach just far enough to brush Chris’s hair with his fingers, so he does. He half-wishes Chris would move, would come closer and put arms around him; but it’s easier to talk without the weight of all that love right beside him. In any case, Chris’s mouth is warm on his skin, so close to his spent cock; he’s not complaining.  
  
He says, one last burst of reckless bravery, “I have nightmares. Sometimes.”  
  
Chris’s breathing catches, over his hip. And all those muscles tighten. Coiling protective anguish.  
  
“No—not about that, not that night—no, you were there, you made tea, you made me feel safe. We’re all right. I’m sorry _._ _Îmi pare atât de_ _rău,_ I’m so sorry, no, not like that.” Because Chris remains visibly unconvinced, he twists around until he can get hands on taut biceps, can coax Chris up to his side. Himself holding Chris Evans. Astonishing. Terrifying. Sublime.  
  
He finds one of Chris’s hands—big and kind and so extraordinarily talented at drawing responses from his body—and slides it between his own legs. Over his cock, which stirs interestedly; he’s making a point, not actively trying to seduce Chris a second time—at the moment—but the tingle of sensation’s definitely a bonus. “I want you,” he says, and Chris’s expression eases even more. “I love you. You were splendid. _Magnific_.”  
  
Chris lets out a breath. “Never been called splendid before. And—magnificent?”  
  
“Exactly. Which, by the way, is just _exact_ , if you want to be lazy. Or…more old-fashioned, but you’ll hear it around… _tocmai_. Precisely.” Chris does claim to enjoy his inadvertent language lessons. Might help with the accidentally reawakened dismay. He arches his hips into Chris’s hand, too. The hand gets the message and begins caressing him, cautiously at first, then with more resolve. “Precisely…like that.”  
  
“Like that?” Chris rubs a thumb over his tip, across the sensitive slit. Sebastian shivers, feeling his cock swell and firm in that grip. Chris does it again. Grins. “So…okay, you’re okay…and I can at least handle _exact_. Can I say you’re exactly magnificent, if I’m gonna steal your words? _Exact magnific_?”  
  
That campfire-glow voice even gets the pronunciation nearly right. Not a surprise, Sebastian thinks hazily, distracted by ecstasy as curious fingers play with his hardening cock. Chris is a musician. An actor. Ear for dialogue. It’s not a terribly traditional word-combination, rather sloppy in terms of linguistic matching, but it makes overall sense, and he’s not in any position to object at the moment. “Very nice. _Aș vrea_ _să te sărut._ ”  
  
“Oh, come on, I can’t start with something easier?”  
  
“I’d like to kiss you. I mean that’s what I said. I’ll tell you again later…”  
  
“Oh. Okay, then…” Chris’s lips meet his with undemanding sweetness, not holding back but not forceful either. Sebastian, somewhat startled, tries to ask for more; when he parts his lips, attempts to beckon Chris’s tongue into claiming his mouth more deeply, Chris pulls away. Sebastian freezes. Cold all the way down.  
  
“Oh fuck,” Chris says, and promptly kisses him again, hard and fast. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong, okay, I like it when you—when that—when you want me. I love that. I wanted to ask you, though, you said nightmares. You said it wasn’t about this and I believe you and you don’t have to tell me, but I’d like to ask.”  
  
“…I love you.” He decides, lying on his back amid scattered hotel pillows with Chris above him, that he can do anything. Can say anything, with those superhero muscles folded protectively around him. “I was going to tell you, you understand. Why I brought it up. I wouldn’t…tease you…without following through.”  
  
Chris’s eyes get excited and elated and privately grateful, at that. “I might get impatient with you teasing me. Might have to do something about it.” The hand’s back to fondling his cock, stroking, stoking fires beneath his skin. Sebastian, taking this as a challenge, says thoughtfully, “Did you have something in mind, because on occasion I quite like being spanked,” and takes vast satisfaction in the resultant heartfelt exhale.  
  
“You,” Chris splutters eventually. “You. That. Oh God. Yes. I mean yes, I mean I’ve never done—but I’d try, I want to, if you—oh God. I can’t believe I ever used to think you were all bashful and innocent, what the fuck, seriously, how are you real, I love you.”  
  
“And I love you. I told you there were some things you should know about me.”  
  
“Yeah…okay, so, we’re doing that. We’re so doing that. After you tell me what you were going to say. I’m not that easily distracted, or, okay, I am, but I do remember.”  
  
“So do I. I wasn’t attempting to distract you.” Only a little. He’s never said this out loud. It’s an impressive hurdle, up close.  
  
He takes a deep breath. Realizes he was wrong, earlier: it is easier to talk with Chris here, sea-blue eyes gazing into his, after all.  
  
He says the words. Those nightmares. The way they’re rare but not extinct even years after the fact. The way they’re worse, now, not every time but on occasion. The last time, the first night after Chris had left, he’d woken with tears damp on his cheek, his pillow, from the dream-truth of being trapped, barred inside his house by faceless uniformed men, the Securitate he’d heard of as a boy through half-comprehended adult conversations having become monsters with long arms and sharp ears in his childhood fears and then never having quite gone away…  
  
In those dreams they never let him or his mother leave.  
  
In that most recent one, he’d been himself, grown and looking the way he currently does in a mirror, and he’d nonetheless known beyond all rationality, known down to his core, that he’d never escape, never come to America, never find Chris’s smile waiting on the other side of a brand-new life. He’d known Chris had to be there, laughing somewhere on a brightly-lit soundstage, alive.  
  
He’d known they’d never meet.  
  
And he’d awakened trembling with cold.  
  
He tells Chris all of that, without looking up. He can’t.  
  
He hears Chris swallow.  
  
And then Chris reaches over and puts both arms around him. Hugs him very tightly. Slides one hand to the back of his neck, solid weight reassuringly in place. Chris must remember, Sebastian thinks, that he likes that, the way it feels like belonging; so he looks up, and their eyes meet.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says. “I love you so much. You know that. Tell me you know.”  
  
“I…think so. I’m trying. I love you.”  
  
“Say it for me.” The hand gets a little heavier, extra assertion. Chris’s body’s hot and present along his, toned and strong and powerful. Naked, both of them. And Chris’s eyes are very bright with unshed tears. “Please.”  
  
“You love me,” Sebastian whispers. The words shouldn’t shake the core of the earth; but they do.  
  
“I love you. And I’m not going anywhere. If you can’t leave then I’ll, I don’t know, dig a tunnel under your walls and find you, it’ll match the one I _know_ you’ve already started on the other side, and we’ll meet in the middle, okay?”  
  
“…you’ve…mastered the art of dream-tunneling…I’m not crying.”  
  
“Of course not. Me either.” Chris holds him through it anyway, arms a castle and moat and shields against the demons. “Want me to sing Sinatra at you?”  
  
“Perhaps…I love you. _Mi-ai intrat in suflet_.”  
  
“What’s that one?” Chris kisses his ear. “Do I have to start taking language lessons?”  
  
“Only from me…naked…in bed. Ah, more or less…you’re in my soul.” He’s certain he’s blushing, he can feel it, but he’s already said the words. And he means them.  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, almost too soundless to be heard. “You—okay, yeah, teach me that one. I want to say that to you. I’m not—you’re too fuckin’ amazing at this, you know, I’m gonna have to try harder. I was going to say…you know I snore when I’m tired. And I’m probably going to need you to kiss me before every interview ever. Every red carpet.”  
  
“I…can live with that? I like listening to you snore. Relaxing.”  
  
“Are you sure that means what you think it means, because we might have a different definition for that one.” But Chris is kissing his ear again, so it’s a joke. “I mean…you know what I mean. So you’ll have nightmares and I’ll have anxiety attacks and we’ll be magnificent together. And also thank you.”  
  
No need to specify. They both know.  
  
The light summons spun gold from Chris’s hair, Captain-America blond again and inviting. The darker trail below his belly button beckons, an arrow. Sebastian follows it with his gaze, and wants to laugh, out of nowhere, with overflowing emotion.  
  
Chris’s thumb rubs along the nape of his neck, his hairline. The air gets more breathless. Hanging sparks in the night.  
  
“I want you,” Sebastian says, wholehearted and quiet and unafraid.  
  
“I want you,” Chris murmurs in reply, and lets Sebastian push him back into the pillows and slide down his body, lips and tongue and just the faintest hint of teeth providing voice for all the unspoken words.  
  
It’s the best Sebastian can offer, and he gives it freely. Everything he can do, everything he has, he’ll lay at Chris’s feet. Because he wants to. In a clear and crystalline way he’s never, ever, known. Not until now.  
  
He leaves kisses scattered like raindrops over Chris’s thigh, knee, calf. Ankle; and Chris makes a quiet sound, but when Sebastian looks up Chris is gazing at him with something like wonder. “You…”  
  
He shrugs, deliberately provocative, sinuous. “I wanted to.”  
  
Chris’s gaze gets darker. Smoldering blue. “You want to be mine.”  
  
“ _Da_. Please.”  
  
Chris starts to answer, stops, looks comically surprised. “I’ve…never done this before. I mean. You _are_ asking for…um, I don’t know what to say. Orders. Words. Sorry! I love you!”  
  
“Touch me,” Sebastian says, and finds Chris’s hand and kisses it, leisurely, one finger at a time. “Make me feel it. Tell me I’m yours. Tell me what you want me to do, what you want to do to me.”  
  
Chris swallows. Turns the hand, tentative but not pulling back, and rests his index finger over Sebastian’s lips. One or both of them breathes in, at that. “Okay. Um. Mouth? I love your mouth. Use it.”  
  
“Yes, Chris,” Sebastian whispers, words sliding out over that fingertip, and does. He starts with Chris’s finger, lavishing attention on it the way he would on Chris’s cock, closing lips and teeth very gently at the base, suckling and stroking with his tongue, devout. Chris groans. “That—you—”  
  
“Hmm?” He looks up, through eyelashes; he knows the effect of that one. He’s used it before. But this is different. This is Chris. And it’s all new, and he wants to do this, wants to surrender, full of wonder and devotion.  
  
“Fuck,” Chris says, staring. “I—fuck.”  
  
“Good?”  
  
“Fuckin’ amazing. Can I—oh, um, not a question, fuck, sorry—get your mouth on my cock. Please. Sorry! I can’t not say it!”  
  
Sebastian starts laughing, helplessly, and collapses into the bed beside him. Chris throws an arm over his eyes. Mourns, “Please tell me I did not just fuck this up by being too polite.”  
  
“No…sorry, one second…no, you didn’t. I love you.” Still shaking with laughter, merriment burning sweet as gold through his veins, he moves lower and wraps a hand and then his lips around Chris’s fantastic cock, shaft iron-hard and delicious to the touch of his tongue. “I love you being polite. This is you. Me, and you.” A pause, letting the emotion ebb, and then, just before Chris can answer: “And this is my mouth on your cock.”  
  
Chris’s mouth, correspondingly, falls open. Sebastian smirks, as much as that’s possible with his lips curved around the enticing length. Licks, movement drawn-out and erotic, over the tip. Then takes a breath, and goes all the way down, until he can feel Chris deep inside his throat, his lips wrapped around the base, pressed into curls of dark springy hair.  
  
Chris gasps, a choked-off shuddering sound. Sebastian holds very still for a moment—memories stir, but submerge themselves again peaceably, unwanted and no part of this gilded fairytale scene, himself here with Chris—and lets his gag reflex adapt. It _has_ been some time. But he’s very, very good.  
  
And he can be good. For Chris. Because he wants to be. And Chris wants him. It’s that simple, and that right.  
  
He pulls back. Looks up. Swings himself off the bed, with maybe just a hint of showing off, and guides Chris that way, until he’s kneeling on the floor between Chris’s spread legs, as Chris sits there looking dazed. “You—what—”  
  
“Keep up,” Sebastian says, and kisses that splendid cock. “Hands in my hair, please. Sir.”  
  
Chris’s lips part, but no noise emerges. Sebastian tries not to laugh. He sort of wants to, though. Deliriously happy. Like fine wine, like champagne, boundless and fizzy and extravagant. He’d never known.  
  
“You,” Chris says at last, weakly. “Okay, um—you did say—mine—”  
  
“Yours, yes. So…”  
  
Chris leans down. Puts a finger under Sebastian’s chin, tipping it up. Their eyes meet. Sebastian nods.  
  
Chris nods back. And then straightens shoulders. Tangibly wraps the role around himself: assertion, dominance, control. The fingers on Sebastian’s face bite down harder. Sebastian blinks. Breathes in, somewhat inadvertently. Oh.  
  
“Right,” Chris says. “Call me sir again.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Oh, again. That’s new. Not the role, but the shivering anticipatory lightness under his skin, in his veins, going straight to his cock. Sparkles in his bones.  
  
He goes back to licking Chris’s cock, caressing, enjoying. Taking the length all the way, when he can, eyes closed. Chris groans. And wraps a hand into his hair. Pulling. Commanding. Sebastian’s entire body tingles, glows, opens up and yields like a flower. Yes.  
  
Chris isn’t gentle. Not rough, not really—he knows roughness, and Chris is actively trying to not hurt him—but relentless. Holding his head. Setting the pace. Taking his mouth, his throat. Sebastian keeps up at first, not inconsiderable skill drawing matching sounds from Chris’s mouth; but after a while simply falls into the hands and the sensation and lets himself be overrun and possessed and conquered, face growing wet and messy with it, from his own mouth and from Chris’s cock pulling back and smearing sticky drops across his lips and chin and face—and from, suddenly, tears.  
  
Chris stops. “Love—”  
  
“Please—” No words. Nothing left. All of him belongs right here, with Chris, for Chris.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says, and a large thumb swipes tears away from his cheek. “Can I…do you want me to, like this?”  
  
It’s a question, not a command, but neither of them minds. Sebastian nods. Chris’s eyes soften and kindle, and a thumb touches the corner of his lips, despite all the messiness. “So beautiful. I always thought so, y’know? —even when I never thought this could happen. I always wanted you.”  
  
“I want you,” Sebastian whispers back. “Sir.”  
  
And Chris laughs, groans, and plunges back into his mouth, down his throat, keeping him full and anchored; he’s a bit lightheaded, not enough oxygen, but he’s not worried. He trusts Chris. So he sucks and licks at Chris’s cock as best he can with it filling him up, every bit of skill, and Chris gasps “Sebastian—” like it’s been punched out of him and comes.  
  
He swallows, coughs, chokes—so _much_ —and swallows again, managing most of it. A bit spills out, over his lips, trickling down his chin. Chris is breathing raggedly, but keeps hands on his shoulders, holding him up. “Sebastian—oh, fuck, oh, wow, I—God—oh fuck come here—”  
  
Chris pulls him up and onto the bed, and the support’s marvelous because Sebastian’s legs aren’t working too well, and the mattress cradles him eagerly; he spreads his legs for Chris’s fingers as they slip between the curves of his ass, over the opening that’s still pliant and easy with lingering lubrication from the first time, and he feels like he’s floating, like nothing he’s ever felt before, all-encompassing and kaleidoscopic—  
  
“I love you,” Chris is saying, over and over, “I love you, please, let me, your turn, I want to—” and the fingers slide in and hit that spot on the first try and the world goes white.  
  
He wakes up being hugged extremely tightly by all of Chris’s limbs. His face is buried in Chris’s chest, which is not conducive to breathing. Once he remembers how fingers work, he manages to poke them into the closest ribs.  
  
Chris jumps. Lets go, but only by a few inches. “Sebastian—oh God—that—was that—are you okay? Did I hurt you?”  
  
Talking. Sentences. English. He puts his head back on Chris’s chest, in a better position, listening to the thump of that generous heartbeat. “No, you didn’t…yes, I am…I feel…” He stops. Smiles. “Good. Sir.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, in the tone of someone recently hit over the head with a two-by-four, possibly in this case made of sex. “That….you…you don’t have to…I mean, I’m not asking…”  
  
“But you like it.”  
  
“…maybe?”  
  
“I like it too.” There’s a crack between the folds of the curtains, in this hotel room. A star’s glittering approval at them. Probably not Mars, but that’s okay, all the stars’re welcome to share in the happy ending. “Yours. Safe. Here, or in dreams.”  
  
“Anywhere.” Chris kisses him, butterfly-light, eyebrow and nose and lips. “Yes. So…we’re good. That was good. And we’re…”  
  
“Good, you were saying? Yes.”  
  
“I love your mouth,” Chris says, and proves it yet again. “Shower? If you can stand. Or I can carry you.”  
  
“Oh, seriously, _du-te-n pisicii ma-tii_ , I can completely stand—oh. All right. Never mind.”  
  
“Completely, huh? You’re not that heavy. Should I ask?”  
  
“Oh…fuck off, but…it’ll sound awkward in…go into your mother’s cats. I did say awkward.”  
  
“Cats, bears, wildlife…” Chris’s hands are teasing, and loving, and firm, easing him down to his feet, flipping on the shower with one hand because the other’s remaining protectively on Sebastian’s waist. “Is this a cultural thing? Should I be expecting yaks?”  
  
“As I recall that one was your invention. I think there’s something about fish eggs, if you’d like. Chris? Sir?”  
  
“We’re…not…doing that outside the bedroom, you know. You do know, right, because I’m not sure I’m ready for that, I think I barely survived this one, give me some time. Not a no. Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine. And yes, agreed. I was surprised, too…” He looks up. That inch between them. It’s not a lot; they’re nearly eye to eye, here in the hotel bathroom, surrounded by the first drifts of companionable steam. “I wanted to ask…you know my room’s down the hall. But I’ve missed sharing a bed with you. Can I—”  
  
“As if you need to ask,” Chris grumbles, but goodnaturedly; Chris knows why he does need to, knows it’s a reflex, knows they both already know the reply. “Yes. Stay. I love you.”  
  
“You may need to go liberate my suitcase.” Sebastian puts one arm around Chris’s neck. Then the other. Because he can. Because Chris’s arms are sneaking around his waist in turn, steady and true. “I probably ought to have a toothbrush. And clothing. For the morning. For rehearsal scenes. Not being naked for rehearsal scenes would be helpful.”  
  
“I like you being naked, but yeah, fair enough.” Chris tugs him closer. Aligned together, touching everyplace, under the billowing water-laden steam. “No one else gets to see you naked. Just me. Shower first, then get back in bed naked while I go on the quest for your toothbrush?”  
  
“Just you. _Da._ ” Sebastian delivers a kiss to the line of Chris’s jaw, over emerging dark stubble, rough and sweet. Shaving will be required before the actual filming starts, but maybe he can convince Chris to keep it for a few days. To leave beard-burn marks across naked skin, tingling and pleasurable. “I love your plan. And I love you.”


	8. yes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chris asks a certain question, and Sebastian says yes, always, yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, leaving kudos, and in general being awesome. I heart you.
> 
> This is the last chapter of this particular story, but there will be more stories for them. Certain Plans are Afoot. Oh yes.

_now, again: Chris_  
  
Chris holds Sebastian’s hand through the entire movie premiere. Holds on a bit more tightly at certain moments. As the Winter Soldier’s put into that chair. As the mouth-guard’s pressed into Bucky’s mouth, beneath Sebastian’s too-compliant lost and broken eyes.  
  
Sebastian squeezes back, fingers firm around his in the air-conditioned cinema dark. I’m here, we’re here, we’re all right. Yes.  
  
Chris had been on set those days, even though the schedule’d given him time off. He knows Sebastian’s not a fan of hospitals, of medical procedures, even movie-magic ones. He’d known then. Sebastian’d told him early on, over morning coffee spiked with chocolate and cream. They’d been discussing plot points and character motivations, on the same literal and metaphorical page as they so often were; those pale aquamarine eyes had glanced down at the script, up at Chris’s face, and a hand had reached for his.  
  
Hospitals, in Communist Romania, in the nineteen-eighties. Not good memories, those. Not good at all.  
  
He’d stood to one side, out of the camera’s eye, and waited. Hadn’t run in to hold Sebastian’s hand between takes—no interference, and he’d not wanted to make anyone think Sebastian couldn’t handle the scenes, and Sebastian manifestly _could_ —but he’d wanted to. And despite the memories, in the end, it’d been Chris who’d had to look away. Who couldn’t watch Sebastian strapped down and brainwashed and tortured.  
  
He’s seen those happy pale eyes in pain. He’s heard the sound of that accent shredded by tears.  
  
Sebastian, holding his hand in the present, squeezes again; Chris glances at him—affirmation, _confirmation_ —and Sebastian picks up their joined hands and touches lips to Chris’s fingertips. With just a hint of tongue, tip slipping out to toy with bare skin.  
  
Chris abruptly finds himself distracted. Powerfully so.  
  
Sebastian grins, Cheshire-kitten pleased with himself, and puts their hands in his lap. Over very evident desire.  
  
Chris swallows a whimper.  
  
Sebastian smiles. And Chris loves him.  
  
On those days of filming, once freed from the chair, Sebastian had reached for him. Had waited until they were back at Chris’s trailer or at the very least around a corner and out of sight, and had put both arms around him, face hidden in Chris’s neck. They’d held each other.  
  
The film is a good one. Powerful, evocative, emotional. Thoroughly plotted politics and a core of love. Chris knows it’s good. Sebastian knows, too. They’d had sheer fun, breathless vertiginous adrenaline-fueled joy, running over rooftops, trading choreographed blocks and blows, dancing on crashed cars.  
  
Chris wants this forever. As the SHIELD helicarriers crumple and crash on the cinema screen, as the presence of Sebastian’s kiss keeps his fingertips and heart warm, he knows that’s true. That joy will permanently be there, scampering through his veins, every time those winter-blue eyes glance his way and smile. Every time Sebastian touches him, or speaks his name.  
  
He wants this forever. It’s that simple.  
  
They’ve not talked about the future, not beyond the context of Marvel films and respective careers. He’s been thinking about it, though. He’s always been that way, aware of potential futures, of all the possible outcomes; that’s where the anxiety lurks, amid too many petrifying ways for it all to go wrong.  
  
Not this time. This will never be wrong. If he asks a certain question and Sebastian says yes, that will be right. If Sebastian says no or asks him to wait, he can do that too. They can do anything, together.  
  
He’s fairly sure Sebastian won’t say no—the eagerness in wide eyes, kneeling at his feet twenty minutes previously to this premiere and also the night before, provides strong support in that direction. He’s not assuming. But he is hoping. He’s hopeful.  
  
Full of hope. With Sebastian. Yes.  
  
The movie ends. Everyone applauds. Chris stands and waves and holds Sebastian’s hand through the barrage of camera-snaps, waved microphones, post-film questions. Together.  
  
The afterparty’s loud and tipsy and flavored with champagne, on Marvel’s dime. Kind of a lot of dimes, Chris muses, and snags two glasses, polishes off one, and then looks at Sebastian, who’s eyeing him interestedly.  
  
“Was one of those intended for me, or are you simply showing off?”  
  
“You can out-drink me, anyway. Which I love, don’t get me wrong, I’ll never forget the look on Robert’s face when you won that one—”  
  
“He should acquire more experience with decent vodka, then.”  
  
“Right,” Chris says, and holds up the second champagne flute, “I actually want you to be sober for this, though. So—”  
  
“For what, precisely?”  
  
“Don’t be impatient. I have plans.”  
  
Sebastian lowers eyelashes, looks up through them, sweetly seductive, innocent and knowing. And he does know, he knows exactly what that look does to Chris; so Chris grins, puts a hand at the small of his back, yanks him close. “Asking me for something, are you? Go on. Ask.”  
  
Sebastian licks lips. Murmurs, “Yes, sir,” and turns Chris’s cock to instant iron, rigid with the need to shove long legs apart and fit himself between them.  
  
He could put Sebastian over his lap, after. Could employ a hand, mock punishment for the interruption, until that pert backside’s red and hot, until Sebastian comes from the spanking alone, sobbing Chris’s name as his climax hits, messy and inevitable and beautiful over Chris’s thighs.  
  
Sebastian gives him that look again. No doubt reading those thoughts. Chris wouldn’t be surprised. “You want me to ask you for my drink? Very well…please, then. If you would like me to have one. Which I assume you do, since you haven’t taken a sip out of it. Oh, sorry, out of character—”  
  
“No, I like it.” He does. He likes Sebastian being himself, dry observant comments and unexpectedly filthy innuendo and steady love beside him in the dark. “I can spank you for it later, if you want. For now, just—be you. I love you.”  
  
“I love you. And that was me, all of it. I like letting you decide…yes or no, what I can have…not all the time, but right now…I like it. So…”  
  
“So,” Chris echoes, “you did ask, that was…good, you’re so good for me, aren’t you,” and watches Sebastian get flustered and pink-cheeked and lovely at the indisputable verbal compliment. He likes that too.  
  
He glances around—no one’s looking their direction right at this second, though that small miracle’s not going to last much longer—and holds Sebastian in place against him. Where they both _know_ that they belong.  
  
He’s still not the best at this role—not exactly experienced, and every so often he has a brief out-of-body panicked instant of _oh God are we really am I really what if I hurt him I can’t hurt him!_ —but he’s getting better. It helps that Sebastian responds with unquestionable joy to every caress, every demonstration of protective command. It helps even more that sometimes the words and the dominance do feel instinctive. Right. Waiting there on his tongue.  
  
He’d thought it earlier, and he thinks it again: he does want this, forever.  
  
There’s still no one looking. Sam Jackson’s bonding with Robert Redford over what sounds like dissections of seventies political thrillers. Anthony Mackie’s descending on the hors d’oeuvres with a decidedly falcon-like glint in his eyes.  
  
Chris grins. And brings the crystal rim of the champagne flute to Sebastian’s lips. “Drink.” Sebastian’s eyes get even more huge and conspiratorially excited in response. And he opens his mouth, while Chris tilts the champagne, not too fast but relentless. Making him keep up; making him swallow, again and again.  
  
Sebastian’s trembling slightly, not with cold, by the time the flute’s empty. Chris lifts it away, sets it without really looking on a nearby table, and lifts his chin, proprietary and gentle. Sebastian’s far enough under to not protest, eyes enormous and sweetly surrendered. Gorgeous, but a bit too fast, too deep, at least in public; Chris considers, sighs, taps fingers over his cheek. “Look at me. I did say sober. Can we get out of here?”  
  
One blink. Two. Returning from the heights. Shyly anticipatory. “Yes? No one’s looking. Car?”  
  
“Absolutely car,” Chris agrees, and tugs him out the door and over to the line of sleek black limos. Sebastian curls up into the seat beside him and kisses him the whole short drive to the hotel, lazy slow explorations of well-known territory. Unhurried and champagne-bright: they’ve got time. Chris untucks Sebastian’s shirt one-handed, fingers dipping below the waist of that lightweight suit. His other hand’s looped around Sebastian’s right wrist, a reminder, not a forceful one. They’ve got an entire future.  
  
Through the hotel lobby, up the elevator, down the hall; only two doors, and there’s their room, oversized bed beaming at them from the center, curtains drawn from that morning when they’d been a shield for all the laughing nakedness. Sebastian had been half-asleep and blissful amid pillows when Chris’d gone to turn on the shower; had wandered soundless and sleepy up behind him, put both arms around him, and left a kiss squarely between his shoulderblades. Chris had felt that kiss everywhere. Head to toe.  
  
He walks Sebastian over to the bed. Peels off all the interfering suit layers along the way. He wants to kiss every inch of that delectable skin.  
  
Sebastian raises eyebrows. “Not at all complaining, but isn’t that my role? Undressing you? Undressing us?”  
  
“Not right now.” He traces an index finger over the left eyebrow. “I love your eyes. And your eyebrows. Have I ever told you that? Because I should have. Like, the day we met.”  
  
“The day we met I was thinking about kissing you.” Sebastian’s hands’re occupied. Flicking open Chris’s pants. “I knew who you were. I’d seen you in other roles. And I kept wondering whether you could see it on my face, how beautiful I thought you were.”  
  
“Beautiful,” Chris says, standing there as Sebastian’s talented hands divest him of clothing, knowing he looks ridiculous wearing only socks and boxers and a broad smile, and not caring in the least, “seriously, we need to get your standards checked, maybe if I’d been showing you my Steve Rogers abs or something, but I had clothes on—”  
  
“And you’re beautiful.” Sebastian blushes, but the words’re sincere. “Your face. Your eyes. The way you look at the world. Your eyelashes.”  
  
“Eyelashes?”  
  
“If you are allowed to compliment my eyebrows, surely I can be permitted to adore your eyelashes.” With a cheeky grin, catching up through the blush: “Sir.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, “oh, you are so going to pay for that, I packed the scarves you like, the silky black ones, and I’m going to blindfold you and tie you to this bed and not let you come until you’re _begging_ for my cock—”  
  
“Perfect!”  
  
And Chris, still standing there almost naked and catching Sebastian’s hands as they start to slide down, as Sebastian starts to kneel, says, “Yes.”  
  
Because it is perfect. Everything is. Not always easy, not free of old nightmares and future apprehension. But perfect, anyway.  
  
“I have something to ask you,” he says. “I know we’ve never really talked about—but I can’t not ask you. Right now. So, um, sort of…don’t move? Stay right there, because you’re perfect, and this is perfect, and I have to ask you this, okay?”  
  
  
  
 _now, again: Sebastian_  
  
“I have something to ask you,” Chris says, and Sebastian freezes awkwardly midway through sliding to his knees, because his brain’s instantly gone to a certain question and the answer’s yes, wholeheartedly yes, incontrovertibly yes, forever yes.  
  
He stands back up, because Chris is tugging at his hands. The rest of him’s very aroused, and very naked, though at the moment this is taking a backseat to the wedding bells ringing in his head.  
  
No. No, it won’t be that, Chris is right, they’ve never discussed this, they’ve never brought it up, for all he knows Chris is about to suggest a new sex position or offer Sebastian a part in whatever film he ends up directing for his behind-the-camera debut down the line. Those fantasies’re all in Sebastian’s own head, where they should really know their place and refrain from jumping up and down.  
  
Chris is still talking. Something about him being perfect and the moment being perfect and how he shouldn’t move, because, again, perfect.  
  
He opens his mouth. Chris says, “No, I know, you’re probably gonna say no, of course you are, you’re right, but please just let me say it, I just have to say it, please?”  
  
Sebastian closes his mouth again. And, again, does not engage in any kind of mental or physical jumping up and down.  
  
The hotel room’s glowing softly. Decorated in shades of gold. Topaz. Brown. Radiant lamplight and white crisp pillowcases. The hush of the universe hanging overhead. And Chris’s hands tight and hot and nervous around his.  
  
“So,” Chris says, “so, oh God, words. So…um…you know your place. In New York.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“And I have a place in Boston. I don’t have a place in New York.”  
  
“Ah…no?”  
  
“Oh, fuck me. What I’m trying to say is, I want us to have a place in New York. And Boston. I want us to have both places. I want to live with you. I want to come home to you. I want to marry you. Oh God, I’ve just said that out loud, and I’m saying it again, I love you, Sebastian Stan, you make me smile and you sing Sinatra to me and you kiss me like—like we’re something amazing. I want to kiss you forever and hold your hand in the dark if you’ll let me and I want to marry you, I love you, will you marry me?”  
  
Sebastian literally can’t answer, words in every single language having tied themselves together into a giant ball of _yes!!_ He tries. He does try.  
  
“That came out all wrong,” Chris says helplessly, “I don’t have a ring, I should’ve—I didn’t even get down on one knee—oh God I’m sorry—”  
  
“Yes!”  
  
“Yes…you want me to…get down on one knee? Okay, yes, absolutely, I can—”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says, laughing, crying, pulling one hand away from Chris’s to swipe over his face, “no, I mean yes, I mean I’m saying yes— _da_ —yes to you, to everything, _dumnezeul meu,_ my God, yes—I don’t need a ring, we can pick them out together—you asked me to marry you while I’m naked!”  
  
“I like you naked.” Chris’s eyes are adorably wide and incredulous and elated. “I love you naked. I love you. You said yes.”  
  
“I said yes.”  
  
“We’re getting married.”  
  
“We are. We’ll be married. Chris—you’ll be my husband.”  
  
“Oh my God.” Chris sounds utterly floored. “I’ll be your husband. You’ll be my husband. Oh, _wow_.”  
  
“Yes…very much wow. Extremely wow.” Sebastian pauses, laughs, weightless and liberated. And, yes, perfect. Coruscatingly, cascadingly so. “I believe I’ve forgotten how to talk.”  
  
“You sometimes like me making you forget how to talk…” Chris plainly means it to be an innuendo, an invitation, but the words come out wondering and awed. “I could try that now. If you want.”  
  
Sebastian contemplates potential answers for only a split second. “Chris…you do know what word traditional wedding vows include…” At the baffled look, he clarifies demurely, “I can promise to obey you, if you’d like, sir,” and Chris makes the best sound he’s ever heard, someplace between a groan and a growl of desire, and then he’s being tossed onto his back on the bed, Chris landing atop him.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says, looking down at him, eyes serious even as the socks and boxers mysteriously hit the floor, as one hand finds Sebastian’s wrists and tugs them together, as Sebastian’s legs instinctively wrap around that beloved waist. “I love you so fucking much.”  
  
“ _Te iubesc,_ ” Sebastian says, and tips his head up just enough to land a kiss on Chris’s mouth. “I know.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rust and Stardust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781314) by [starlight_starbright](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_starbright/pseuds/starlight_starbright)




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